Eating Disorders

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the eating disorders charity Beat conducted a survey last autumn and found that 69% of those with eating disorders had found that their GPs did not know what to do with them. That result was, if anything, worse than the same survey conducted five years earlier. It is good the Government are acknowledging that medical students need to learn more about how to deal with eating disorders, but could the Minister give us a guarantee that those GPs already in practice who know nothing about eating disorders at the moment—and choose not to—can be helped to understand the issue better?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

This is an opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Beat and to remind noble Lords that it is Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and we should be aware of these issues. One of those issues is understanding the different types of eating disorders. Eating disorders is a catch-all phrase and we have to understand that there is: anorexia nervosa, which is more common among people aged eight and over; bulimia nervosa, which tends to affect people at 12 or 13; binge eating disorders, which affect people in adolescence and also their later years—their 30s and 40s; and other atypical eating disorders. It is really important that we understand this and, when we look at training for the general workforce and specialist mental health workforce, that they are more aware of the issues of eating disorders.