Eating Disorders

Empowering Doncaster’s Youth with Eating Disorder Awareness and Support

Eating disorders are complex, often misunderstood mental health conditions that affect millions of people worldwide. They don’t discriminate by age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status. Yet, they are still widely misunderstood, shrouded in stigma, and often left unspoken. It’s time to change that.

The more we understand and raise awareness about eating disorders, the better equipped we will be to offer support, reduce stigma, and foster healthier conversations about food, body image, and self-worth. Eating disorders are serious, often life-threatening conditions that involve harmful eating habits and preoccupation with food, body weight, and shape. The most common types include:

Anorexia Nervosa: Characterized by extreme restriction of food intake, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted body image that can lead to a dangerously low body weight.
Bulimia Nervosa: Involves cycles of overeating (binge eating) followed by purging behaviours like vomiting, excessive exercise, or fasting to prevent weight gain.
Binge Eating Disorder: Characterized by frequent episodes of eating large quantities of food in a short period, often accompanied by feelings of guilt or shame, but without purging behaviours.
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFED): This category encompasses various eating disorders that don’t fit the criteria above but still present significant health risks.

Unfortunately, we know that body image and disordered eating behaviours are an issue for Doncaster’s young people. Doncaster’s Pupil Lifestyle Survey is an anonymous school-based questionnaire, providing valuable data on children and young people’s health related behaviour – primary and secondary aged children. Schools across Doncaster are invited to take part and are given an induvial report of their results. This year’s Pupil Lifestyle Survey of Doncaster secondary schools told us that:

Physical appearance is the main target for bullying with 46% of all secondary pupils who have been picked on or bullied saying it was because of the way they look and a further 39% say it was because of their size or weight.
48% of secondary pupils say they have made changes to their appearance recently, girls are more likely than any other cohort to do so (58%), closely followed by LGBTQ (57%).
Perceptions of the way they look are the things secondary pupils most worry about (38%), followed by exams and tests (32%). Only 13% overall say they don’t worry about anything, consistent with the previous year.
52% of all secondary pupils remember being measured when they were at primary school. Of those that can remember, 21% felt unhappy about it.

As a result of what we know about Doncaster’s young people and their concerns about body image from our Pupil Lifestyle Survey, and following the 2022 Make Your Mark results finding “Mental Health & Wellbeing” as the top issue for Doncaster’s young people – the Doncaster Youth Council conducted a deep-dive which led to the finding that Eating Disorders are the most common topic that young people wanted information and support about.

The Youth Council has since created a new campaign to spread awareness of the potential harms that eating disorders can have, alongside resources to support young people to learn more and seek help. The purpose of the Youth Council’s #EDit Views campaign is to “implement positive and effective change for all young people in our city and beyond, to meaningfully tackle the sensitive issue carefully, by creating low level early intervention resources to raise awareness, promote healthy attitudes towards body image, the importance of talking to others and free support services available to then”.

Please check out both links below to view the learning activities, resources, and guide developed by the Doncaster Youth Council:

If you need further support on the topic of eating disorders, please speak to a health professional, or check the following websites for more information:

Category: General

Last updated: 14 January 2025 14:45:34

Get in touch