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Around 1.25 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder. Eating disorder psychiatrist, Dr Dasha Nicholls, provides an insight into this group of complex disorders and the factors that influence them.<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s common for people to be dismissive when I tell them I work in the eating disorders field. Unless you have suffered from or know someone who has suffered from an eating disorder, the public perception, and indeed the scientific and clinical one often too, is that eating disorders are not serious. Of course, everyone knows of a few high profile people who have suffered or died from an eating disorder, but they may be seen as rare casualties of a celebrity lifestyle.<\/p>\n What many people don\u2019t know is that most people with an eating disorder are of normal or even higher weight, that boys and men are affected too and that eating disorders don\u2019t discriminate by ethnicity or social class. For most people, eating disorders start in the teenage years or young adulthood, but children as young as seven and adults as old as 90 can suffer too. The incidence in children has increased significantly in the past 15 years, for reasons I will speculate on more below.<\/p>\n Like most mental health problems, eating disorders are defined by thoughts, feelings and behaviours and not by weight. \u00a0Eating disorders are therefore often invisible, and sufferers may go for a long time without their problem being noticed. People with eating disorders are often slow to seek help \u2013 it takes on average five years for some types of eating disorder – because shame, guilt and self-blame are common.<\/p>\n Anorexia nervosa tends to be noticed before bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, because of weight loss. We know from previous studies that by the time help is sought from a health professional it is likely to mean that an eating disorder is emerging, which makes sense if you think about how bad things need to be before it becomes obvious or someone seeks help.<\/p>\n
\nNot all\u00a0eating disorders\u00a0are visible to others<\/h2>\n