How To Help Someone With An Eating Disorder

Hi, my name is Niki, and I'm a counsellor and psychotherapist, and I work a lot with teenagers. I'm here to talk to you about some of the issues you might find that you're dealing with as a teenager, and to hopefully give you some tips that might be useful. I'm going to talk to you about how you help someone that you think has an eating disorder, so probably if you're watching this there's someone you're concerned about, a friend or maybe a family member that has an eating disorder.

First of all, let's have an understanding of what are the eating disorders. There are three main eating disorders that are talked about. One is anorexia nervosa, which is when somebody under-eats.

They eat so little that they send their body into a semi-starvation state and they become very thin and very ill. They also can have a different idea of their body image, so they can think that they're fat when they're actually really thin. People with anorexia nervosa also can obviously really value thinness, that's the kind of goal they want to get to, and to get to that thin state they might over-exorcise, or take laxatives to try to not keep any food in.

They might limit their food to such a small amount that they become really physically ill to the point of threatening their own lives. Bulimia nervosa refers to what is often just called "bulimia", and is when somebody eats and then throws up. It's called purging.

Sometimes people can overeat, binge, other times they'll just eat normal amounts, but they'll throw up after they've eaten. People who have bulimia nervosa also can sometimes take laxatives, or sometimes over-exorcise, but their weight tends to be more of an average weight, or even people who can be overweight can have bulimia nervosa. What you'll often notice with people who are bulimic is that after eating, they'll rush to the toilet, usually to throw up, or they'll try to be secretive about how they vomit and bring their food up.

There's a lot of stigma around eating disorders so people will mostly cover up the way in which they eat but if you're close enough friends you'll pick up on things and obviously you wouldn't be listening to this if you weren't concerned. The third type of eating disorder is called binge eating disorder, and that's when someone overeats, they binge. They buy lots of food and they just stuff themselves, to the point of really feeling ill.

They can actually be ill from eating so much. Sometimes people vomit from this, but other times they might just overeat. There are other types of eating disorders that aren't as specific as this, things like fad eating, where people only eat, let's say, green foods.

There are a number of types of eating disorders, but they're the main ones. If you want to learn more, do some research, go online, speak to a general practitioner or nurse and find out a bit more about the signs and symptoms of eating disorders. But the other thing that's most important is talking to your friend or talking to the person you're concerned about.

Speak to them about your problems. Sorry, not your problems, your worries about them, so speak to them about your worries about them and let them know what you're concerned about, that you've noticed that they've gotten thin, or you noticed that they've gotten obsessed with food, or they might be throwing up food after they've eaten, and that you're worried about them. Let them know that you want to support them.

And do your research so you can let them know ways that you could support them best which is talking to experts. There are a lot of people, whether they are counsellors or they're in the health professions that will really help people that are suffering from food problems. Part of having any eating disorder is also a psychological problem.

There's always an underlying problem going on for people and as a result of that problem, the way in which they deal with it, is through controlling