ok, here's the difference for me. I knew one person who had an eating disorder and attempted suicide. She hid it really quite effectively, and the suicide bid might have been successful if it hadn't been for her flatmate leaving the house for a weekend, and then coming back after half an hour because she realised she'd left something behind, and walking in on the attempt in progress, and cancelling plans and going to the hospital instead. That person was definitely ill, and definitely needed help, and when the help was offered, she took it, and things improved. I also knew someone who made a big song and dance about how they had an eating disorder and were suicidal. She would make a scratch on her arm and then show it off to everyone as "this is from when I tried to off myself". She'd show someone a half-full bottle of pills and say "I took these" and then a week or so later her mum found, ooh, about half a bottle's worth of the same pills in the pocket of the coat she'd been wearing on that day. The tin lid on that one was when she was at my house and didn't realise I was reading in my bedroom, next to the upstairs toilet. I heard someone (her) come upstairs, I heard the door shut, then I heard nothing, then the door opened again and footsteps went back down the stairs. I thought "that's strange, no noise, not even a tap running or a flush, why would someone go to the loo just to sit there?" so I went downstairs too, and found everyone making a fuss and phoning a doctor and texting her boyfriend to come back from his day out with his family and so on, because she'd told them she'd made herself sick and there had been blood in it. I told them I hadn't heard puking or flushing or even a tap running to rinse her mouth. Nobody was amused. Can you imagine the effect that had on people who cared about her? How anxious and worried she was making them, and with no justification? We cared about her, but she didn't give a toss what she was doing to us. When professional help was offered to her - pills, counselling, etc, her parents were even prepared to arrange for her to go to a private clinic - she refused it, both before and after the incidents I've described. I don't know if things improved because frankly I wasn't prepared to be a marionnette in her personal puppet theatre any longer. I don't consider that to be "desertion of an ill person", I consider it preserving my own mental health.