Eating Disorders Service

Beat – Eating Disorder Support Group (Cirencester)

The group meets every month on the first Wednesday of the the month. It is open to sufferers, relatives and friends.

Group Facilitator: Pat Ayres    Telephone: 01285 770385

ConnectED

Are you supporting a loved one who is struggling with eating and body image?

ConnectED is a monthly group for sharing and listening, an opportunity for connection and a space to help break the silence that exists for those affected: parents/carers, family and friends – anyone supporting someone with an eating disorder.

The group meets in Dursley, the first Wednesday of every month, from 6-7pm.

Contact ConnectED | Linktree

You can refer yourself to us or you can ask your GP or other health professional to refer you/your child.  To make a referral, please complete our referral form.

 

 

It is important to us to know how well our treatments work and what kind of a difference they make to our patients’ lives. So, when we offer you treatment we will also give you the opportunity take part in one of our research studies. This is completely voluntary and if you would rather not take part, it won’t affect your treatment in any way. If you do decide to take part, we won’t ask you for any personal information that identifies you: it will be completely anonymous. We can’t promise you any benefits from taking part in a study, but it helps us learn about how patients respond to our treatments, and this can lead to us improving what we do in future.

At present, we are recruiting participants for the following studies:

• Evaluating our outpatient treatments
• Evaluating Interpersonal Group Psychotherapy for binge eating disorder

We are planning the following future study:

• Does Child and Adolescent Home Treatment improve parental self-efficacy

It is important to us to collaborate with our service users about making decisions relating to how our service operates. We currently do this by:

• Having a “suggestions” box in our reception area
• Inviting ex-service users to sit on interview panels when we recruit new members of staff
• Displaying service users’ artwork and creative writing on the walls at the Brownhill Centre
• Working with service users to raise awareness in the media about eating disorders and their treatment
• Inviting ex-service users to help run our Recovery Workshops for patients and carers

Please get in touch if you have any feedback about our service and/or suggestions about how we can improve what we do.

What do our patients say about recovery? Here are some of the comments made by our service users

 Through recovery, I have finally been able to discover the real “me”, buried under an eating disorder for years and years… And also discovered that there are things I like about myself: something I could never see before.

 Whenever the nagging voice of the illness creeps back in I have made a pact to myself to do the opposite of what it is telling me. Some days this is easier than others, but the days that it is harder just remind me of why it is so important to keep fighting. For those of you reading this who think that recovery is not possible for you or that life will never be different – you have the power to change that. It will mean going against everything that your eating disorder is telling you and will be the hardest thing you do, but it will also be the most rewarding. I came across a quote that reads, ‘Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip toe if you must but take the step’. So today I urge you to take that step, as painful as that will be – recovery is most definitely worth it.

 I’ve learnt that control isn’t dictated by how little I eat and how thin I get. It’s about doing what’s best for me and my life and having options and opportunities.