August 24, 2025
Lara Ahmed

“ In my mind, I thought  no, not my daughter. This stuff is never going to happen to my daughter, because my daughter is different. These things don’t happen to our children…  In April of 2020, my 15-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a very severe form of anorexia in California, she was 15 at the time, and we spent about a year in and out of hospitals in the U.S.”

Neveen Radwan,  an Egyptian-American mother of three has spent the majority of her life in the US. Though eating disorders are part of mainstream conversations, it’s usually only on the surface level. Personal experience later showed her just how little society  knows about  disorders like anorexia. 

Cleveland Clinic defines anorexia as “an eating disorder that involves severe calorie restriction and often, a very low body weight. It’s a complex condition that has mental, behavioral and physical symptoms. Treatment for anorexia is essential due to its life-threatening complications.”

Radwan grappled with her daughter’s diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic when the healthcare system was at its breaking point.  The  first signs were subtle and she can recognize them now that she’s come out from the other side. Anorexia’s severe mental effects frequently cause serious physical complications that can become life-threatening.

In Radwan’s daughter’s case, it escalated to a point where her heart stopped multiple times and her parents were worried about survival. Radwan emphasizes that  knowledge is a parent’s best line of defense. 

“This is actually one of the reasons why I ultimately wrote the book because there were a lot of things I realized later that I didn’t recognize, and that I didn’t see earlier.”

The book she’s referring to is ‘A Glow-Up Gone Wrong’ ; it acts as a guide for navigating the struggles and stigmas of eating disorders.  Radwan wrote this short book initially as a journal for her daughter but it has also blossomed into a guide for struggling parents.  Radwan states that all proceeds go to parents of children with eating disorders. 

Radwan points out  that social media was a catalyst for the symptoms. Her daughter was someone who valued her athleticism; COVID meant she now turned  to the web for fitness advice and began pushing her body beyond limits.  “My daughter would search for things like workouts or healthy eating, what ended up happening is she would get search results that were very different from what she was looking for.  She would Google healthy eating, then she would get videos that say how to stay under 500 calories a day or she would  get  these insane workouts  and [discover content saying] if you want to stay skinny, you need to be able to fit into a baby swing.”  

Body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD, is a recognized mental disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, “[It] is a mental health condition in which you can’t stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance — a flaw that appears minor or can’t be seen by others.”   BBD is a common precursor to full-blown anorexia and dieting is rooted in distorted thoughts on body image. 

“A 14 year old should not be cutting carbs, especially when she’s healthy. Even if they’re what people call overweight, they shouldn’t be dieting. They should  be maybe modifying a little bit , but they shouldn’t be dieting.”

As with many other disorders, recovery was not linear and the process of getting better was in itself traumatic.

“We ultimately added her to a treatment center for six months, between May to October of 2021. But once she got out, she relapsed very quickly. They wanted to send her back to the treatment center, where at that point it was very traumatic to send her back. Her experience during that time was very difficult, but we actually decided to bring her to Egypt. Initially, it was just for a short visit to see her grandparents and her family, but we ended up staying for almost two years, for her to finish school and high school.”

Though their time in Egypt was part of the healing process , finding a qualified practitioner wasn’t easy and the lack of eating disorder awareness quickly became apparent. 

Eating disorders statistics in Egypt are hard to pinpoint but a 2024 study in The Egyptian Journal of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery notes a growing prevalence. Despite this, the medical system is lagging behind on knowledge and treatment. 

“We have one hospital in Cairo that  treats eating disorders, but they are very, very unequipped for serious cases.” 

Radwan was soon sharing her experiences and as word got around, parents began contacting her.  

“I started realizing that there was about zero level of awareness of eating disorders in Egypt.  The most important aspect of treatment is early intervention and awareness. I know for a fact, 100%, if I knew half of the things I know now in the beginning, our trajectory would have been very different.”

Now Radwan is tackling the lack of eating disorder awareness  from a structural level, starting with parents but also extending to healthcare and education. Her initiative, the Ameera Foundation, is dedicated to early intervention awareness and support for affected families.   

“ I started a nonprofit organization  in California where I live,  just for awareness  and training of parents here in Egypt. What I do now is I try to come to Egypt every six months or so. I do parent awareness, like seminars and presentations  with school counselors and parents.”

Radwan has also teamed up with other specialists, such as Mahmoud Zaki in Self Center, who specializes in eating disorders.

A significant barrier to finding licensed eating specialists is the cost of official programmes for certification. Certificate programs are based in countries such as the UK, causing some therapists in Egypt to forego the training entirely. 

Radwan has found that some therapists may say they are certified even when they aren’t ; however, due to the complexity of training in eating disorders, certification is not a step that can be skipped.

She also notes that the shortage of specialists is only part of the issue. Waiting lists for qualified doctors seem never-ending, while session costs are ever-growing.  “If I can get enough funding to get doctors certified yearly, and have each of those commit to a certain number of pro-bono [free/reduced cost sessions] of patients a year… then we can get more doctors on the ground and cover the financial aspect where we have a lot of patients who can’t afford treatment.”

Radwan’s current challenge is in finding healthcare or corporate sponsors. The aim is for the funding to go to certification of therapists and services provided. 

“For me it’s extremely important that all options are available so parents don’t have to go to somebody who is unqualified just because they can’t afford it or there’s too long of a waitlist- because this is life or death… I got my child back and need to make sure other parents get theirs back as well.”