Student support systems

Your university will probably have a counselling service. You may find that there is a general counsellor you can see and possibly an eating disorder specialist, in the university.

If you decide to go to university counselling check: http://www.studentcounselling.org  

1. How long you can see the counsellor for as this is a free service for students
2. If there is any vacation support
3. The boundaries and confidentiality policies. Are they between you and your counsellor or do they go wider into your course, the University and G.P.?
4. How the service works with people with eating disorders.
5. What other help, local support groups and organisations are there in the area.
6.  How do you get a referral to the local specialist team

• Support  with shopping, eating, cooking
• Timetabling in for lunch and breaks
• Meal support
• Lockable food cupboards
• Appropriate accommodation.
• A listening ear
• Extensions for assignments for extenuating or mitigating circumstances
• Support for medical appointments

Also check your rights in the student disability centre (under mental health). There may be a mental health liaison nurse and university too.

If you don’t ask, you won’t know what you could be entitled to. Student welfare may also be able to set up a support group* for people with Eating disorders and we would be able to train them and support them to do so.

*What if I meet someone I know at a meeting

Coming to a self help support meeting takes a lot of courage. There can be lots of barriers in the way.

If you are coming to a group, and worry about meeting others, what will they think of me? Will they judge my size? Will they judge me or talk about me?

1. What if I meet someone from my house/ year/ club?
2. Will things get worse if people know how I feel?
3. Nothing has helped before so why should this?

The thought of coming to a meeting can be overwhelmingly scary and many things prevent people coming to get self help and support.

Generally if someone comes to a group they are coming for themselves and we work with a policy of confidentiality, and this helps to make things safe so you would not talk about other people outside the group to anyone. People come to the group for support not for judging, this can give a sense of relief and mutual support.

Generally when people are able to come to a group they find that they see they are not alone and people identify with how they feel, and the feeling of isolation, loneliness and not being understood change. They realise other students feel alone and can begin to make links with other people who may understand them and look for peer support in between groups. Students have given people their mobile numbers, email addresses and have arranged to meet up and chat and do things during the week.

Med Centre G.P
It may be helpful to register when you get to university. Some people try to avoid registering with the G.P. and then do not know what support is on offer until things to get really hard and someone persuades you to go to the G.P.

The doctor should be understanding and informed about supporting students with eating disorders and aware of the appropriate treatments. If he/she is not, refer them to the Eating Disorders NICE guidelines 2004 (www.nice.org.uk). Sometimes it is helpful to take a friend or to talk to your college counsellor/tutor/SWEDA for support of how to get heard and help.

 What therapy to choose
 There are various therapies that people with eating disorders choose, some of these are very structured programmes others are very client centred, which means that the therapist follows where you need/want/choose to explore.

Some therapies are "proven" to be useful with certain types of eating disorder e.g. bulimia and CBT.  There are also many therapies which are effective but have not been clinically run as I wonder how you would measure recovery your from an eating disorder? What we know is that it is more than weight gain/management and behaviour modification but how your relationship is with yourself and how if feels to be you and how your inside world is.

The usefulness really comes from you and the relationship you create with your therapist and the timing of the intervention i.e. when you are ready and motivated to use the type of therapy.

Types of therapy
You may want to check our information on finding a therapist.

Make sure that the therapist or health profession you see is registered therapist with their professional body, check for links on http://www.webhealth.co.uk/professional_bodies.html

People may have an additional specialisation in CBT, CAT, IPT, but should have a main professional body to give them clinical practioner status. You can look up in The Nice guidelines http://www.nice.org.uk  and use the advanced search for eating disorders. This will give you the NHS recommendations of  treatment of Eating Disorders

The definitions of these can be found on the talking therapies website http://www.phobics-society.org.uk/talkingtherapies.html

There is also a lot of information on http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/index.cfm

The National Eating Disorders Association has a site that give practioner lists in each area of the country which you may wish to look at www.edauk.cam/list/index.htm

If in doubt check it out.

Voluntary Organisations
There is a register of voluntary organisations/charities http://bubl.ac.uk/uk/charities/s.htm  and web pages of directories of professional registered and accredited therapists http://www.hpc-uk.org and others on on our site.

By using this you can check out their legitimacy, code of ethics and conduct before using a service. Sometimes there are organisations/therapists who do not work within the guidelines of their professional codes of conduct and in your interest so feel able to check them out!

 Do I really need therapy?
Not everybody chooses to engage in therapy to find recovery from their eating disorder. Sometimes people find something new to do and refocus their energy - and give them an alternative coping strategy. There are many ways to find recovery and the life you want to live.

So seek support to find what you want and need. At different times in our life journey we have different needs, there is no shame in needing support and therapy. It takes a lot of courage to do this.

This may seem to feel harder and more in your face as you begin to engage in a process. This is normal. Talk about it! Do you remember as a child learning to paint and how messy that got before you learnt to use brushes and paints and gradually the picture became recognisable?!!

Sometimes if we knew how hard things were going to be it may stop us giving it a go and stop us finding what there is to discover and enjoy!

We may also do therapy for a while get to where we need to for now and stop. Then after a break you may choose another form of help/support for the next part of your journey.

Remember there are similar things in people's journeys, but each journey is individual and no two journeys are the same. So do yours the way you want/need to.

When am I ready to use help?

I am ok I don’t have a problem
Perhaps you are in a stage where you are living with your eating disorder and do not feel it is getting in the way of your life. Maybe you don’t have a problem with it. Perhaps it feels like other people seem to have the difficulty. Maybe at this time you are not thinking about making any changes but a G.P. or nurse may ask to monitor your physical safety.

I am fed up of it all and scared
Maybe you get to a stage where you begin to get fed up of people trying to help you. You begin to see how your eating disorder is getting in the way of your life, your studying and having fun and are not quiet sure how you would manage without it. It has been a familiar friend but now is a bit in the way and you are afraid not to have it by your side incase things go wrong. You may be thinking about making some changes and not sure how to do this. A therapist may be helpful to listen to your thinking and help you think about what you want and need in your life right now. Together you may be able to think about how to get what you want in your life.

• I have had enough of it. My Eating Disorder is getting in the way of my life.
• Enough is enough. I will not let it steal my life any more.

Now you may think you really have had enough. You may seek active support to make changes in your life style. This help maybe from a specialist team, your GP and mental health team or another health practioner. This will be a tough and rewarding part of the journey. You may feel that in order to do this you need to take some time out of studying and defer for a year in order to sort out your inside world and outside life style. Ask your student welfare workers for advice on this. You may ask for more support to do this therapeutic journey alongside your studying.

Sometimes you may think I am exhausted this is all such hard work. Is it worth it? Then you may temporarily blip and dip back into living in the “problematic Eating Disorder rules of life.” All journeys have ups and downs. The road to recovery is not a straight line.

Perhaps after awhile you will see what is happening and seek help to actively get out of the clutches of your eating disorder again. This time you will learn something new and find how strong you were to get back on the road again. Do seek the active support you need and go for it!

 The journey has many dips and peaks; it is all part of finding the richness of your life.

Mastering Life without hurting myself
Living in the solution of your life without food problems takes again energy and can be really hard with the temptress of dipping back in to the problem way of life. It may feel like that would shelter you from all that you now see and feel and think. It may seem like you want protection from facing the outside world, like:-

·        Eating with people
·         People seeing you
·        People commenting on your body
·        People noticing your health changes
·        People seeing the emerging you

Often in making these steps to maintain the solution you will need even more support and encouragement form friends and professionals to keep well. This step will involve facing things that you have not been able to manage for a long time.

• Are they registered with professional body?       Yƒ N ƒ
• Are they insured for private practice?
• Are they approved private practitioners?
• Do they get regular supervision?
• What does supervision entails
• Can they offer you a regular time(s) and day(s) each week?
• Do you understand how therapy works
• Have you made a contract with them
• How many sessions have you agreed to
• When will you review therapy?
• What is their confidentiality policy, when would that be broken?
• What happens if you are ill/cancel/die?
• What happens if they are ill/die/cancel?
• Do they keep records/notes? Where are they stored?
• How much do they charge?
• How do you pay?
• What happens if I need support in between sessions?
• Do they have experience of working with eating disorders?
• How does that change the way they work?
• How/to whom do I complain if I am not happy with what you offer me?