It’s probable he didn’t have a choice. Mental disease is truly “demons”, “little voices”, a loss of grip. Mental disease doesn’t simply allow for a person to say, “I’ll live the life the Lord meant me to live.” People with eating disorders don’t “choose” to waste away from starvation. They don’t “choose” to purge every time they eat.
I’m not trying to be argumentative, but if these people have no choice, then how is it that doctors and psychotherapists are often recommended to help them? And when they try to help them how is it even conceivable that they can be helped if they have no choice and the behavior they’re pursuing is inexorable and without choice? If they have no choice, well that is depressing, isn’t it? If they believe that, they’re bound to feel there is no hope. Without hope, as Eric Fromm’s book MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING points out, people just die. He noted that in Hitler’s prison camps those without hope died very quickly regardless of their physical condition while those with hope often lived inexplicably longer.