What is Eating Distress?

Eating distress occurs most often when an individual is feeling unable to cope with areas of their day-to-day life. Different types of eating distress often begin as a result of an individual attempting to take control in one area of their life, when they feel they have lost all control in other areas.

At some time most of us will experience dissatisfaction with our body shape or size. This starts to become a problem when an obsession with food begins to dominate an individuals life, or when they start to use food in a damaging way. There are a variety of types of eating distress, and each has its own symptoms, and causes different physical problems.

The most commonly recognised forms of eating distress are Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Compulsive or Binge eating, though people might experience more than one of these and there are many people who suffer with other types of eating distress.

Anorexia Nervosa is an obsession with food, usually incorporating a refusal to eat, and a desire to lose weight unneccessarily. Bulimia Nervosa manifests itself in a different way, whereby people tend to overeat, perhaps in "binges" but then vomit or use laxatives to purge themselves of what they have consumed. Compulsive overeating and Binge Eating are different again in that they cause people to overeat, or to pick at food constantly throughout the day, leading to excessive weight gain.

Facts About Eating Distress

According to the Eating Disorders Association around 2% of young women and 0.2% of men suffer from Anorexia or Bulimia Nervosa, though the true figure is thought to be higher as many people do not ask for help.

Around 60,000 people may be experiencing Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa at anyone time in the UK. This means that a typical GP with 2,000 patients could expect to have a couple of people experiencing Anorexia and around eighteen experiencing Bulimia. (General Practice Research Database 1993)

It is not only adolescent women who experience eating distress, it can affect women of all ages, and around 10% of those diagnosed are men.

It is estimated that there are 8.1 new cases of Anorexia and 11.4 new cases of Bulimia per 100,000 population per year.(Hoek HW 1993)

Eating distress is considerably greater than these statistics show, as many people never approach their GPs for treatment, and as yet there is no research reporting on the incidence of Compulsive Eating or other forms of eating distress.

[What is NIWE?] [Our Services] [What is Eating Distress?] [News] [Links] [Contact Us]