March 2004 Archives
The National Institute of Clinical Excellence are in the process of developing guidelines for self-harm treatment in the UK. Further details are available here. The finished guideline will be published in July 2004.
An two-year inquiry into self-harm in young people in the UK has just been announced, chaired by the Mental Health Foundation and the Camelot Foundation. The inquiry aims to understand more about the causes of self-harm in 11-25 year olds and find out what can be done to help.
This is great news, especially as self harm may be becoming more common, affecting up to 1 in 10 teenagers and resulting in 150,00 A&E visits per year. Sadly, many of those visiting A&E are discharged without being offered psychological or psychiatric help and are may face negative attitudes from hospital staff.
The Nutrition SIG at the Academy of Eating Disorders has compiled a current list of references on nutrition and eating disorders. To access the PDF, visit the Nutrition SIG page and scroll down to the bottom.
Thanks to Diane Keddy for drawing my attention to this (via the Academy listserv).
A paper describing Myra Cooper, Adrian Wells and Gillian Todd's new model of bulimia has just come out in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Whilst looking at the website of the Canadian National Eating Disorders Information Centre, NEDIC, I came across an interesting online exhibition, entitled 'Beyond Compare' and sponsored by Dove. It consists of photographs of women, taken by women, which are all on the theme of beauty.
I felt uncomfortable about some of the images, some of which show very stereotyped ideas of beauty, including some very underweight women.
But other images clearly challenge traditional ideas of beauty, and show women of all ages and colours, revelling in their diversity.
I particularly liked an image of an older woman doing her make up, entitled 'Mirror (Close Up)' and taken by Margi Geerlinks (look carefully as there's more to this one than meets the eye). Also a wonderfully powerful image of Aung San Suu Kyi, taken by Brigitte Lacombe.
Have a look at the exhibition and let me know what you think.
Gurze Books are the only publishers I know who specialise in books on eating disorders. They
offer books at discounted prices, plus their website also contains many free articles about eating disorders, newsletters, and a range of useful links.
I'm pleased to report that you can now register online for the Academy of Eating Disorders 2004 International Conference.
For more details, see my earlier post about the conference or check out the AED website.
This question is one of the most commonly asked by students, researchers and sufferers alike. It's also one of the hardest to get information on, so I thought that as I needed to put together this information for another purpose, I'd also post it here. I'm very grateful to Laura Currin, researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry who helped me out with much of this information.
In 1980, Garner and colleagues published what was to become a seminal paper in the eating disorders. In this paper, they measured the 'vital statistics' of models appearing in a well-known men's magazine and 'Miss America' contestants and in order to examine cultural shifts in the 'ideal' body shape for women. They showed that beftween 1959 and 1979 the Body Mass Index of models (a measure of weight taking account of height) dropped signficantly. This change occurred alongside an increase in the weight of the normal population over the same period. There was also a suggestion that the measurements of hips and bust has decreased relative to waist measurements, indicating a move towards a more androgynous, straight up and down shape.
The Eating Disorders Association and the Bethlem Royal Hospital (South London and Maudsley NHS Trust) are co-organising a conference for carers of people with eating disorders. The conference will begin on Friday evening with an informal networking event for carers and professionals, followed by a day of presentations and discussions on Saturday.
You can book a place through Christine Hallams, Fitzmary One, Bethlem Royal Hospital, Monks Orchard Rd, Beckenham, Kent, BR3 3BX or via the EDA website, which also has the full programme and details of last year's conference.
All this week, BBC digital music station 6Music have been running a campaign about the links between mental health issues and music. called 'Songs that Saved My Life'.
There have been items on various different shows during the week, covering issues such as the emotional impact of music, interviews with a range of musical artists about how their music and performance has been affected by their state of mind and mood induction experiments live online. Listeners have been invited to vote for their top 'Song that Saved my Life'.
This evening, Tom Robinson's Evening Sequence featured a discussion with music journalist Patrick Humphries and yours truly, talking about the tortured artist in music. You can listen to the programme between now and next thursday on the Evening Sequence webpage (click on 'Listen to Thursday's Programme')
Update, 18/3/04: Unfortunately, you can no longer listen to the programme on the BBC website as they only keep recordings for 1 week. But links to mental health resources and helpline details are still available.
I did quite a bit of research before the programme and wanted to mention a few of really good resources I came up with.
Elsevier are launching a new journal, called 'Body Image: An International Journal of Research', edited by Thomas Cash.
Th first issue is available FREE to view on ScienceDirect.
Here's a list of national and regional eating disorders organisations and support groups that I'm aware of (updated 19/1/05). Do email me with corrections and additions.
I will post information on professional organisations (where these are
separate from those more oriented around self-help and support) in a later post.
I wanted to mention a resource available on the
The site contains a wealth of information and advice on mental health problems including pages on different problems, seeking help and what different professionals do. The are pages on both anorexia and bulimia too. I must confess a vested interest as I was involved with writing some of the material as part of a campaign on mental health issues which Radio1 ran last year, called 'Mental Health: Read the Signs'.
If you don't happen to have a copy of the DSM-IV criteria or the quick reference on you, it's useful to know that all the DSM-IV criteria, including the ones for eating disorders, are available online from Behavenet. As well as listing the criteria, they also suggest various useful literature and weblinks for each condition.
I was pleased to see that Simon Gowers and Rachel Bryant-Waugh have recently published a comprehensive review of child and adolescent eating disorders. Both have extensive experience in the area and have recently been involved in developing the NICE guidelines for eating disorders.
I've just watched the first of 4 short 'animated documentaries' on mental health topics on Channel 4. The programmes each deal with a different mental health problem - today's was on agoraphobia - and combine voice-over from a person who suffers with a particular problem with animation by way of illustration. The result is quite an interesting and unusual depiction of the problem, which avoids the 'docu-drama' feel that you so often get on this type of programme.
The series is a collaboration between APT Films and the Documentary Filmmakers Group (DFG). Unusually, the producer/director is a working clinical psychologist, Andy Glynne, who also lectures on my DClinPsy course at UCL.
There are three further programmes on Tuesday to Thursday of this week at 7.55. They deal with psychosis (2nd March), obsessive compulsive disorder (3rd March) and finally manic depression (4th March).
An article on BBC news reports research from MIT suggesting that the Atkins diet may be associated with mood swings and depression. Judith Wurtman and colleagues at the MIT clinical research centre have confirmed earlier research suggesting that consumption of carbohydrates is essential for the production of serotonin, which, as well as being involved in satiety, also helps in emotion regulation.
You've just got time to submit a workshop or poster proposal to the Annual Renfrew Conference. This year's conference is entitled 'Feminist Perspectives and Beyond: Hungers, Health and Healing' and will be held in Philadelphia from 4th-7th November 2004.
The conference organisers would welcome proposals which address the following:
Treatment techniques and programs that address the hungers of eating disorders.
Research and treatment in the field of obesity and weight loss surgery.
Perspectives on weight loss, dieting and Health at Every Size.
Hungers specific to diverse populations and life cycle issues.
The concept of the empty self in the development and treatment of eating disorders.
If you are interested in submitting a proposal, you can get further information from the Renfrew website.
Proposals must be received by 5th March 2004.
