ALANA Goldsmith had the world at her feet. A gorgeous, bubbly blonde, she was dux of her school, scored an ATAR of 95 and was fielding offers to work overseas for Google and Mattel.
But the 23-year-old, from Cammeray on Sydney's north shore, hid a dark secret from her family and friends for almost a decade.

Alana suffered in silence until she took her life two months ago.

Now her family has called for an inquest to review patient care and has demanded answers as to how she was able to slip out of hospital twice the day she died.

Sister Simone, 21, said the family also wanted to raise awareness that anorexia was not a vain desire to be thin, but a devastating mental illness whose sufferers are 32 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers.

"People think anorexia is a choice, that they are choosing not to eat," Simone said.

"People think it's all about being thin, when it's really a mental illness."

Simone and her father, Barrie, will tell Alana's story at the Butterfly Foundation's major fundraising event, the Butterfly Chrysalis Ball, on Thursday night. It would have been Alana's 24th birthday.

Alana first showed signs of an eating disorder when she returned from an exchange trip to Japan in Year 9, aged 15.

Her mother, Judy, burst into tears at the airport when she saw how emaciated her daughter had become, but Alana explained it by saying her host family did not have much food.

"I accepted (that) " Ms Goldsmith said. "I thought all I needed to do was help her get the weight back on, but the problem ran deeper."

It was not until last November, when Alana returned from another stint in Japan, that she was finally admitted to hospital.

At her thinnest, 170cm-tall Alana weighed just 41kg, with a body mass index of 14 -- dangerously underweight.

In her final days in hospital, Alana wrote in her journal of her struggle against voices in her head telling her not to eat:

"I feel really mentally exhausted. Telling myself that it is OK to be here and eating. But then ED (eating disorder) voices tell me I should leave and lose the weight that I have so quickly gained."

On the afternoon of July 22, Alana slipped out of the hospital unnoticed for the second time that day and was found dead a few hours later.

Ms Goldsmith said it was important families learned to recognise the warning signs and educated themselves.

"It was not the care in hospital, per se -- it was just the lack of monitoring," she said.

"It's voluntary admission but in the era of occupational health and safety, most institutions know how many people are in the building at any point in time. Why isn't that the case for a clinic dealing with mentally ill people?"



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