Eating disorders are severe mental health disorders. They often develop alongside a range of other physical and mental health problems and are associated with a high death rate.
Despite the negative impact of eating disorders on society and the lives of people experiencing them, research into why they develop is limited. This is largely due to relevant data being unavailable both in the UK and internationally.
Our understanding of how societal and environmental factors impact the development of eating disorders remains limited, despite increasing numbers of people being affected by them.
This project will build inter-disciplinary networks and infrastructure to allow scientists in the next decade to fill these gaps in knowledge and practice.
Project aims
This project has three aims:
Improving how eating disorders are measured and identified
Mapping how what a person is exposed to during their life affects their health
Understanding school environments to identify risk factors that could be modified
What we hope to achieve
We hope that our work will contribute to policy changes in the future and impact how services are developed in each of the three areas we will be focusing on.