cape-cod-times

                                                  ORLEANS - Amy Kinney suffers from depression, self-injury and
                                                  anorexia - and she's not afraid to talk about it.

                                                  Even more than talking, the 28-year-old Orleans resident has made her
                                                  suicidal thoughts, her hospital stays, her self-imposed starvation, into art.

                                                  Seventy-six of her colored pencil drawings will be on display May 20,
                                                  21 and 22 at the DBT Skills Center in West Yarmouth, where she receives
                                                   therapy.

                                                 ''I really want the world to see I'm not ashamed of who I am,'' Kinney said.
                                                 ''Yeah, I have all these illnesses. But I'm proud of who I am.''

                                                  While it is unusual to have an art exhibit at a clinic that primarily treats
                                                  people who are anorexics, who cut themselves or have borderline
                                                   personality disorder, therapist Lorraine A. Touchette says the exhibit is not
                                                   inconsistent with her mission. It will be healing for the whole community,
                                                   she said.

About 2 million U.S. teens self-mutilate, mostly by cutting their legs or arms, according to SHiNE, an online teen
resource guide. As many as 10 million women in the United States suffer from an eating disorder, according to
the National Eating Disorder Association.

''It's really reaching the younger kids and males as well as females,'' Touchette said.

Many people worry about the stigma of mental illness, Touchette said. ''But Amy has just put all that aside and
says, 'This is what I have, and this is what I'm doing to try to get better.'''

To describe Kinney's appearance and achievements is to acknowledge part of the paradox of her disorders: She
hides behind a perfect exterior, but the mask becomes her undoing.

She is thin with a broad smile and fashionable clothes.
She is smart, the valedictorian of Woodstock Academy,
the public school in her former home in Woodstock, Conn.
She graduated from Smith College with a math major a
nd teacher certification.

She taught math at high schools in North Andover and
Westport, Conn. After one year teaching at Cape Cod
Regional Technical High School in Harwich, the school
offered to promote her to head of the math department
in May, she said. ''And two weeks later, I was in a mental
hospital,'' she said. ''My mom had a major aneurysm in
the spring and I just wanted to die.''

Kinney's life is a series of such episodes. As a preteen,
she'd take rocks and bang them on her legs. She gave
herself cuts and bruises.

In high school, the bruises became inconvenient because she got teased for being clumsy. Her misery still
needed an expression, however, so she hit upon ''the eating thing'' - anorexia.

''For me, it wasn't about feeling fat,'' Kinney said. ''It was about wanting to disappear and die. Or maybe
someone would notice I was sick. I think I wanted to look as sick on the outside as I felt on the inside.''
When she stopped eating, the hollows in her cheeks began to make her look how she felt: starved, empty,
wasting away.

By college, her eating disorder had become an obsession with thinness. And the depression, which she sees as
the root cause for all the other behaviors, continued to find expression in other ways.

''My first clue that something was really not right was when I was hanging something in my room in college
and there was a hammer on my bed. And I was afraid of it,'' she said. ''I was afraid I would smash my head
with it.''

Despite the inner turmoil, Kinney became a teacher.

''On the outside, she was a successful person, the head of the math department, a very respected teacher,'' said
her close friend, Helena Ferreira, 31, of Provincetown. The two met at Smith in 1998.

''But what I didn't know was that she wasn't sleeping or eating. She'd pace up and down the hallways before the
kids arrived. She had anxiety attacks.''

Kinney's mask slipped badly in May.

''I was cutting, starving myself, drinking bleach, taking extra pills, etc.'' Kinney said.

After cutting herself deeply enough to require stitches, she entered a psychiatric hospital.

Her friends brought her journals. But no words came. Instead, she turned to the artistic talent she had developed
in high school.

And suddenly, even though she ''wanted to die,'' she found herself filling a journal with drawings, colorful
sketches that expressed her darkest thoughts. She drew a slouching twig of a woman - herself in many different
forms. Crumpled like an ant on a floating bed, looking in a mirror that shows beauty on the outside and
''hideousness'' on the inside.

The drawings express heavy emotions in a light way, said Jen Stratton, a teacher at Nauset Adult Education
who leads an art therapy class for people with eating disorders.

''They are these cute drawings, that keeps you wanting to turn to the next page. But they get the point across,''
Stratton said.

Kinney discusses the events of her life in a manner that, on the surface, seems as carefree as her drawings.
She works at the Hot Chocolate Sparrow in Orleans, where the small tables are close together. Yet she doesn't
lower her voice when the words ''eating disorder'' and ''cutting'' come up.

''When you have to hide and keep secrets, it makes you hate yourself,'' she said.

She sees the exhibit as a mini clothesline project for mental illness. The Clothesline Project ''breaks the silence''
of domestic abuse by hanging T-shirts representing victims of abuse.

To pay for the framing of her show, Kinney raised $2,000 in donations. For $10, people could write a
dedication to a friend or loved one to appear next to a drawing. Kinney also plans to make it a traveling exhibit,
and would like to have the art published in book form.

This new path means she's giving up the classroom for a while. But teaching math had always been her least
favorite part of the job.

''As a teacher, I was always the Gay Straight Alliance director, the Anti-Defamation League adviser,'' she said.
''I think all the students assumed I was gay or had a mentally retarded brother, or a Jewish best friend.''

But the truth is, she cared about tolerance because she felt alienated herself.

''At her core, she's a teacher,'' said Ferreira, ''and I think she'll be able to do a lot with her art.''


	Published: May 10, 2005 "Healing Art" By K.C. Myers Staff Wrtier