About Eating Disorders

The term eating disorder refers to a mental health condition which harms the individual’s physical and psychological well-being. There are different types of eating disorders, some being more widely recognised than others. Signs of eating disorders vary and sometimes can be hard to detect, particularly if the sufferer is seeking to hide them.

Here, we provide a comprehensive list of eating disorders types below, with further pages of information for each, reflecting the most recent classifications and understanding.

Although each eating disorder type will have specific symptoms, all have one core feature in common: the individual is struggling with difficult feelings and emotions and expresses this in disordered behaviour around food. Eating disorders causes, for all individuals, will be varied and there will be several factors, but all will involve different forms of emotional difficulties.

A person with anorexia will severely restrict their food intake and a person with bulimia will binge with large amounts of food, then purge by vomiting or taking laxatives. However, in both individuals, their disordered relationship with food is a way of reflecting or displacing the strong, difficult emotions that they are struggling with.

Effective treatment of eating disorders is wholly dependent on establishing an accurate diagnosis: different types of eating disorders require different treatment approaches.