Eating Disorders

When my son Ben fell sick with anorexia, back in 2009 when he was 15, his school was amazingly supportive. By early 2010 he was finding it increasingly impossible to be in school. He couldn’t bear being anywhere near his peers, he was regularly breaking down in lessons and in the school dining hall, he was behaving irrationally and dangerously, he was exercising like mad at any opportunity and he was spending much of his time in the school medical centre rather than in lessons. And, of course, he was eating minimally throughout the day resulting in more and more weight loss.Ben’s dad and I figured that we could get Ben to eat more if he was at home being monitored through breakfast, snacks, lunch and the evening meal. …

I may have mentioned this already, but I’m speaking at the Scottish Eating Disorder Interest Group (SEDIG) Carers’ Conference 2016 at the end of next month (Saturday 27th February). The title of my talk will be “Eating disorders aren’t just a ‘girl thing'”; indeed the main thrust of the conference, I believe, will be about eating disorders in males and in particular eating disorders and anorexia in teenage boys.The angle I’m taking for my talk is that not only did it take some time for my husband Paul and I to recognise that our son was developing an eating disorder, because we had no idea that boys got eating disorders just like girls do, but that throughout the whole process – from GP referral through to CAMHS …

My sister pointed out this article about a friend of hers whose healthy, sporty son was sent home with a letter from school telling his mum that he was overweight. This especially incensed the boy’s mother because she herself had been a victim of anorexia as a young woman and understood more than most people about the dangers of the many things that can trigger an eating disorder.There’s a massive conflict at the moment between the drive to do something about the escalating levels of obesity in the UK and the danger that warnings/solutions could trigger the wrong sort of people to lose weight i.e. those predisposed to developing an eating disorder.The thing is, none of the measures which are being rolled out …

At last I’ve put all my blog posts (from 2011 when I began writing about eating disorders in boys up to the end of 2015) onto PDFs. So they’re much easier to read than clicking around Blogger which can be a nightmare. The latter two years – 2014 and 2015 – tend to be a bit more thin on the ground than the other years because, as you will know if you’ve been following my blog, I was struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder type symptoms which hit me at the end of 2013.So throughout 2014 and 2015 I took a bit of a break from writing about eating disorders in boys and my son’s recovery from anorexia while I concentrated on fixing the PTSD problem. It also meant putting on hold …

For better or for worse, I’m a terrible micromanager. And you wouldn’t believe the tweaking that’s gone into my script and PowerPoint presentation for the talk I’m doing at the Scottish Eating Disorder Interest Group (SEDIG) Carers’ Conference 2016 at the end of next month (Saturday 27th February). But I think I finally sorted it out. I think the main problem with my talk (which is called “Eating disorders aren’t just a ‘girl thing'”) is that I’ve got such a massive story that condensing it into just 25 or 30 minutes has been a bit tricky, to say the least! I’m not just talking about my son’s descent into and recovery from anorexia, I’m also talking about how he’s getting along now and also looking at what helped and what …

That’s what I’ll be asking the guy who’s in charge of rolling out FBT (Family Based Therapy) for adolescent eating disorder patients in Leeds when I meet with him on Wednesday. My home city of Leeds is claiming to be a ‘pioneer’ in the rolling out of FBT in England and so I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about plans for FBT being implemented in other parts of England. Already it’s being implemented in Scotland – and England was lagging behind. I’m not sure what the situation is in Wales or Northern Ireland.According to studies and trials, FBT as an outpatient treatment model for adolescents with eating disorders such as anorexia has a higher and more sustained success rate than other treatment models …

My home city of Leeds is one of the first areas in England which is pioneering FBT (Family Based Therapy) as the primary model for treating adolescents with eating disorders in the city. It all goes back to Chancellor Of The Exchequer George Osborne’s Autumn Statement in 2014 when he promised an extra £2 billion a year of additional funding for the NHS across various services including mental health. Leeds was one of the authorities that applied for funding and they were successful in their bid. So some of this funding is being used to roll out a new service for adolescents with eating disorders within the Leeds postcode area.Hopefully, the new service will “go live” at some point this year, but I’m not sure when. Meanwhile …

If you look back on my blog posts over the last couple of years, you’ll notice that they were a bit thin on the ground for a while. That was because of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc which suddenly hit me about 27 months ago and which meant that I had to take a break from anything to do with eating disorders because I found it very triggering.Thanks to the fourth set of therapy sessions (care of the NHS!), I seem to have finally come out the other end. I still have issues with anxiety, but am pretty much able to manage this using all the various CBT/mindfulness tools that I’ve learned along the way. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to fix the nightmares …