OCD and eating disorders are mental health disorders that usually develop during adolescence or young adulthood. While they are distinct conditions with different pathologies, they share many characteristics. Co-occurring OCD and eating disorders are also common: many young people with eating disorders also live with OCD, and vice versa.
When a young person develops an eating problem, seeking professional support is the first step. It’s very difficult for someone to recover from an eating problem on their own, and treatment and support are crucial for both the young person and their family.
Eating disorders are about more than food and body image. They’re caused by a complicated interplay of emotional, cognitive, and social experiences that lead to a preoccupation with body weight and shape and disordered eating behaviours.
In this blog, we explain how lasting recovery requires addressing past traumas, interpersonal difficulties, and other underlying experiences that maintain eating disorder symptoms. We outline some of the effective treatment modalities available, and question why so many recovery programs still focus on weight and numbers.
This blog offers some information on alcohol use among young people with eating disorders, including anorexia. It also outlines the kind of treatment available for teenagers living with anorexia nervosa and alcohol use disorder.
Over the past three decades, eating disorders have become increasingly common in the Gulf region and Western Asia. Sociocultural changes have affected the way young
Parents should seek professional advice straight away, regardless of the way their child is self-harming or the dynamics of their relationship. Self-harm always requires support from a professional, however a child is self-harming and regardless of its physical impact.
Eating problems always require professional support, and this support should involve the family too. This means that mental health professionals should help parents understand their child’s experience and develop the skills they need to support their recovery journey. This might happen through family therapy, parenting interventions, or discussions with therapists.
Emotions are a huge part of the human experience. They help us to understand and react to situations quickly, before we have time to logically process what’s happening. They pull us towards certain things and push us away from others.
A review of eating disorder research in the Arab world presents several factors that different studies have associated with eating disorders in the region. However, a lot of eating disorder research in the region focuses on the role of westernisation in the rise of eating disorders, rather than considering the full range of factors.
We can think of families as systems, where the well-being and behaviours of each family member affect all the rest, and the family system as
Most young people play video games sometimes. But when gaming starts to dominate a young person’s life, it can be a sign of addiction. Gaming
Exam stress is common among young people around the world. Pressure from teachers, schools, family members and wider society can make young people feel like
