In the opening pages of journalist Katya Cengel’s incredibly affecting new memoir, “Straitjackets and Lunch Money,” she recounts volunteering with a writing program at an East Bay juvenile detention facility in 2012 while living in Richmond. One day while there, she saw a boy of about 12 years old being forcibly restrained in a stiff, white straitjacket.

“It was incredibly uncomfortable seeing that he looked so young, but there was something else about it that kept bothering me,” Cengel said by phone from her office at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where she’s a lecturer in the journalism department.

看到她不能动摇,所以Cengel called her mom to ask if she remembered her ever being straitjacketed herself during an excruciating four months Cengel spent hospitalized at Stanford Children’s Hospital in 1986 with a severe eating disorder. Cengel was only 10 at the time and arrived at Stanford’s now defunct Roth psychosomatic (med-psych) unit weighing just 55 pounds, too weak to even walk 10 steps to the bathroom.

“She told me that I was (put in a straitjacket), and then I started to kind of remember it for the first time,” said Cengel.

As that potent memory came into sharper focus, she felt a renewed desire to delve into this painful period in her life, to understand both why she stopped eating to the point of severe malnutrition, what extreme measures were taken to save her and how the standard of care for children in similarly dire situations has, or hasn’t, evolved since then.

“Now I can ask the questions I couldn’t ask as a child,” she writes.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What answers were you looking for about this painful period in your childhood?

A:Well, a lot of my writing career actually stems from this experience. I wanted to understand it better and to see how things have changed for kids now. If a kid is going through what I went through, what happens to them?

I also wanted to know exactly what was done to help me, so I decided to revisit it from my journalistic perspective.

Q: You switch between writing in your childhood voice and the more detached perspective of an adult reporter. Did writing each have its challenges?

A:The childhood voice was the harder part, and it’s actually one of the first things I ever wrote as a writer. I was in college, so it was only eight or nine years after those experiences. When I sat down to write about it, I realized I still felt such anger, but it was too immediate and self-involved, without reflection, so I ended up putting it aside.

Years later, I realized it still haunted me. The reporting part felt safer and easier because I could take out my notebook, have some distance as a journalist, ask questions about myself and other people with a greater remove.

Q: You’re understandably critical of some of the treatments you received in the hospital, but as an adult you also recognize they saved your life, right?

A:Yes, absolutely. I should have died before (being admitted) because of the weight I was at, and the only reason I survived is because I had cut back on food slowly over time. So the child in me is very angry at what was done, being restrained and having different medications tried on me. Even the adult me still has a bit of anger, but I understand. What do you do with a 10-year-old who is so stubborn and determined to do away with herself? You need to take drastic action. They force-fed me, but otherwise I wouldn’t have been fed. The ends justify the means, I guess. I’m still here.

Q: Your eating disorder confused doctors because you were so young. It had nothing to do with body image, right?

A:Right. I was prepubescent, so they didn’t even officially diagnose anorexia. With someone so young, they weren’t sure what to do.

In my case, it was an escape and it numbed my pain and anxiety. If you’re not eating, you’re too tired to feel anything really. Not eating had started as a way I thought I could help my dad, who was severely depressed and unemployed and complaining about money. My idea was if I stopped eating lunch and saved my lunch money, I’d impress him and give him that dollar every day.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for people who wonder how to best help a young person who is refusing to eat?

A:I remember that as a kid, I was pushing people away and telling them to give up on me, but I really did want them to notice me and fight me back. I wanted them to care enough to say, “No, I want you to live.” As backward as it sounds, because a kid could be doing everything to push you away, they really are asking for you to show you care, show them they matter. So sticking by kids no matter how hard it is, that’s the biggest thing that can be done. Keep saying, “I still love you. I am still here. You’re not going to push me away.” It doesn’t even have to be a parent. One of the reasons I went to visit incarcerated youth was because they feel forgotten, cast aside. The idea that someone who isn’t even related to them has come to visit, it means a lot. It means society cares.

Jessica Zack is a freelance writer.