Eating disorders are incredibly complicated, and despite the name they aren't fundamentally about eating. They may be an expression of deeper underlying issues which develop following adverse or even traumatic experiences. Eating disorders can bring with them really dangerous risks and consequences, and if untreated become so much harder to heal as they morph and take over a person’s life - (like a parasite that controls its host).

The issue is that our current thinking and subsequent treatments are not hitting the mark closely enough, they fail to always take into consideration each individual’s past negative experiences, personal beliefs, or perspectives as part of a larger system, which can drive the eating disorder among other psychiatric comorbidities. We need to look below the surface-level and beef-up the treatments we are using. More importantly, we need to be led by those with firsthand insight into how we best apply a trauma-informed approach to eating disorder treatment.

We’ve pulled together a diverse research team with a broad range of experiences to help us understand how we can best apply a trauma-informed approach to eating disorder care. We’ll look at the different layers of a treatment that has demonstrated effectiveness in complex trauma and how this can be adapted to complex eating disorders. At this stage we will develop a co-designed protocol, which we hope to be able to test widely in the next 2-5 years. We need a new way forward, we need to rethink eating disorders not as being in silos, but as part of a broader system of an individual’s mental health.