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Suffering from an eating disorder is a distressing, isolating and sometimes deadly experience. Approximately 1.25 million people in the UK are currently struggling with an eating disorder, with this figure thought to be rising each year. Anorexia nervosa alone has the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses.

Once an eating disorder has someone in its grasp, it can wreak havoc on their life and put the person through physical and emotional turmoil. Eating disorders can ruin relationships, families and lives. Evidence shows that the more quickly a sufferer receives proper treatment, the more likely they are to make a full recovery. Despite this, it has recently come to light that UK undergraduate medical students receive less than two hours of teaching on eating disorders throughout their entire medical degree. Some 20% of medical schools do not include eating disorders at all in their teaching! 

I battled anorexia as a teenager and struggled initially to find the help that I needed, as healthcare professionals only seemed interested in maintaining my weight and not addressing the emotional difficulties at the core of the disorder. I found myself becoming withdrawn, succumbing to an illness that was poorly understood by those around me. As with any mental illness it can be difficult not to blame the person for how symptoms of the disease manifest, and I found it exceedingly difficult to get anyone to understand why eating was suddenly so difficult. Beat works to challenge the stigmatisation of eating disorders, and to raise awareness of these conditions in order for sufferers to get the help they need as quickly as possible. They run phone and email helplines, offer awareness training in schools and workplaces and campaign to improve efficacy in identifying and treating eating disorders. I think it's important to start a conversation about these illnesses - how they can dominate not just the life of the sufferer, but also the lives of everyone close to that person. If you can spare a little money, this is a very worthy cause!

Link to Beat's petition calling for better eating disorder training for medical students and junior doctors:

https://campaigning.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/page/25360/petition/1

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