Danilen Nursigadoo on community‑driven eating disorder recovery | Blogs
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Danilen Nursigadoo on community‑driven eating disorder recovery
The theme for this year's Eating Disorder Awareness week is Community, looking at the power of support systems for individuals struggling with an eating disorder.
To best understand how families and communities can support, we spoke with Danilen Nursigadoo, Senior Family and Systemic Psychotherapist, who works in our Eating Disorders Day Services and Outpatients.
Eating disorders can be extremely isolating and individuals can often feel unsupported. To tackle this, it is essential that people who are experiencing an eating disorder are surrounded by communities that help them feel they belong and offer them a safe space for recovery.
Danilen spoke to us about how family and support networks often feel apprehensive about what they can do to support a loved one who is going through recovery.
Providing emotional support
“One of the greatest challenges as a family member, as a friend, as someone who is connected to someone with an eating disorder is: H ow do you respond to it? What do you do? It can leave family members and friends feeling really cautious about how to respond in a helpful way. They often worry the ways in which they are responding are unhelpful.
O ne of the most challenging things about that, is that it can often lead to family members withdrawing from offering care, which can leave their loved one with the eating disorder even more isolated. Family members can also end up isolating themselves from others.
That is not what the person with the eating disorder needs. It can leave families feeling it’s safer or better to do nothing. I would always encourage families to become more informed about eating disorders, to learn more. There’s such an abundance of information out there.”
Providing practical support
“Reach out for support, speak to others and professionals, and support loved ones to get help early, support them with going to the GP, support them with learning more about eating disorders and how their behaviours may be harmful to them.”
Family therapy as a space for recovery
Family therapy offers a space for difficult conversations to be had. By bringing the system around the person with the eating disorder together, those supporting a loved one can learn how to respond in a helpful way.
Rather than taking a step back, those in the individual’s inner circle can really listen to the challenges their loved one is facing and approach their recovery journey with consideration and kindness.
Marina spoke to us about the impact family therapy had after her daughter was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. She said: “Family therapy helped us to improve our understanding of each other at a time of crisis. It gave us the opportunity to really listen to each other and the space to express how we felt as very worried parents.”
Danilen on eating disorder misconceptions:
The evidence we have so far shows that at least 25% (around 1 in 4) of all sufferers of eating disorders are men.
Also, ethnic minorities are much less likely to be identified early on as having eating disorders. This often leads to them being disproportionately represented in inpatient services.
Between 2017-2020 there was a demonstrable 31% increase in inpatient admissions for white patients with eating disorders compared to a 53% increase in admission for ethnic minority patients. Among Black African patients, there was a 216% increase in admissions.
“That possibly suggests that minority ethnic patients aren’t getting help early enough and that their eating disorders are only being recognised when it’s too late for outpatient services to be able to support them. There’s probably further research required to better understand this. It’s quite possible there are systemic issues where either health professionals are not identifying and referring early, or there are barriers to ethnic minority groups seeking support early. That might be related to cultural barriers to seeking help, or beliefs they might hold that what they experience is not an eating disorder.”
Alongside men and ethnic minority groups, the LGBTQIA+ community are among the highest at risk groups for developing eating disorders and experience higher prevalences of eating disorders then the rest of the population.
That’s especially the case among non-binary and transgender people. It’s estimated that around 18%, so close to one in five, people from the transgender community have experienced an eating disorder in their lives.
“Eating disorders are something for professionals across all health services to be mindful of, please don’t make assumptions, and make early referrals so that support can be given to people who need it as early as possible.”