Eating disorders

Eating disorders can affect anyone regardless of their age, gender or ethnic background. In simple terms, an eating disorder occurs when someone develops a complicated relationship with food and/or body image. The main eating disorders are anorexia, bulimia nervosa and binge eating.

You can contact our Counselling, Mental Health and Wellbeing team for one-to-one support and they will also be able to refer you to the “Coping with Eating Distress” 5-week course.

Useful online resources include:

• The NHS website will help you recognise what an eating disorder is, what can cause it and keep the problem going, the effects, whether you want to make changes, and if so how to do that.
• Leaflets written by The Royal College of Psychiatrists – scroll down to the section titled ‘Eating Disorders’ - contain a lot of up to date and useful information about eating problems and how to get help.
• The charity Beat has a good Information Library on eating disorders and provide a helpline: 0808 801 0677.
• MMU Library Wellbeing Wakelet contains a collection of resources you can use to improve your wellbeing, including information on eating disorders. You’ll find links to the Library catalogue (for print books and ebooks), websites, PDFs, podcasts and videos.