beat Eating Disorders

About eating disorders

Food and eating play a very important part in our lives. We all vary in the foods we like, how much we need to eat and when we like to eat. Food is essential for our health and development.

It’s not unusual to experiment with different eating habits, for example you may have decided to become a vegetarian or tried changing your diet to improve your health. However, some eating patterns can be damaging.

Problems with food can begin when it's used to cope with those times when you are bored, anxious, angry, lonely, ashamed or sad. Food becomes a problem when it is used to help you to cope with painful situations or feelings, or to relieve stress, perhaps without you even realising it.

If this is how you deal with emotions and feelings and you are unhappy about it, then you should try to talk to someone you trust. Try not to bottle things up - this is not helpful to you or other people around you, it won’t make you feel any better and the problem is unlikely to go away.

It is unlikely that an eating disorder will result from a single cause. It is much more likely to be a combination of many factors, events, feelings or pressures which lead to you feeling unable to cope. These can include: low self-esteem, family relationships, problems with friends, the death of someone special, problems at work, college or at university, lack of confidence, sexual or emotional abuse. Many people talk about simply feeling ‘too fat’ or ‘not good enough’.

Often people with eating disorders say that the eating disorder is the only way they feel they can stay in control of their life, but as time goes on it isn’t really you who is in control – it is the eating disorder. Some people also find they are affected by an urge to harm themselves or misuse alcohol or drugs.

For more information about eating disorders please visit our site here

Our contact details www.b-eat.co.uk/YoungPeople Youthline for people 25 and under 0845 634 7650 open 4.30-8.30 weekdays and 1-4.30 Saturdays or e-mail fyp@b-eat.co.uk

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is essential to the services beat provides. But sometimes there are some circumstances where it may be necessary to break confidentiality. These are if there is a danger to the caller or others in their care (ie Child Protection issues).

It is very rare for us to consider or indeed decide to break a service user's confidentiality.

If we do have to break Confidentiality

You will be informed

• The reasons why the decision has been made will be explained.
• The possible repercussions of breaking confidentiality will be explained.

Please contact our support services if you have any questions.