Lincolnshire practitioner tells us the importance of early intervention of young people suffering eating disorders

A Lincolnshire practitioner is hoping to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of someone suffering with an eating disorder to help save lives. Around 1.25 million people in the UK suffer from this, and yet, their symptoms can still go unnoticed by those around them.

The illness includes things like bulimia, binge eating disorder, restrictive food intake disorder and anorexia.

Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Senior Eating Disorders Practitioner, Charlotte Long says anyone can be affected:

"Absolutely anybody can be affected by an eating disorder. I think historically, there's been certain stereotypes of people who have an eating disorder, but it can be males, females... it can develop at any age, most commonly, it develops throughout teenage years or early 20s, but certainly it can be at different ages as well, and and it can be associated with increased stress in that person's life, or it might be around body image concerns, but not exclusively around that."

She continued to detail some of the key signs:

"So, the sort of early signs that there might be an eating disorder developing is change in eating behaviours and habits around eating. So that could be eating more, or it could be eating less. It could be being sick, and making yourself sick, or laxative use, or and feeling more compelled to exercise.

"There's also behaviours to look out for, the thoughts and feelings that come with that. So, if somebody's more preoccupied or finding it difficult to focus on other things, that becomes more important than anything else, can be heightened with a lot of anxiety.

"So fears around weight gain or feelings of guilt or self disgust around eating, they would be signs that eating's not quite as normal and healthy as it should be.

"And the other thing to look out for is the impact that it's having on everyday life for that person. So, are there concerns about eating? Is it starting to impact on things like work, or education, or friendships?

"Finally, not always the case, but often you can start to notice a deterioration in physical health, and it's a really important that if they are struggling with these things, they see their GP just to get their physical health checked."

Charlotte is also the Co-ordinator of the new Eating Disorders Service, FREED.

FREED is the first early intervention service for young people with eating disorders.

It stands for First Episode Rapid Early Intervention for Eating Disorders. It is a service for 16 to 25-year-olds who have had an eating disorder for three years or less.

Young people getting help for their eating disorder through FREED are given rapid access to specialised treatment which gives special attention to challenges young people face during these years of their life, and in the early stages of an eating disorder.

Charlotte tells us how important early intervention is:

"This is really important because eating disorders develops when that person tries to cope with what's going on in life, with how they're feeling and the earlier that they can get help, the much better their prognosis is.

"So one of the things that we're trying to do in the eating disorders service at the moment, is use our new FREED pathway, which is early intervention. Now this pathway is specifically aimed for young people aged between 16 and 25 years old.

"That doesn't mean that there isn't a service there for people outside of that age range. There absolutely is. But we know that that's the age that most commonly an eating disorder will develop, and we know that if they can access help, certainly within the first three years of an eating disorder developing, then there's a much higher likelihood of them being able to recover fully from that.

"It's part of a a national project. So it's something that's been rolled out nationally over the past few years, and they've already found quite staggering results from improved recovery rates, and less time that the young person is spent with an eating disorder."

For help and support or further information, visit the Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust website.