Just in time to celebrate Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2024 (EDAW), Action Mental Health’s eating disorder service, AMH EveryBODY, has successfully launched a series of year-round 5-week creative courses, which bring tactile craft making to a new level through activities such as mosaic making, clay sculpture and wet felting. These interactive sessions are actively helping to build lasting friendships and skills, while highlighting how eating disorders can affect anyone.
Delivered to AMH EveryBODY clients and those supported by the Southern Trust (SHSCT) eating disorder team, course facilitators have a unique goal to not only pass on a new creative skill, but support recovery and help develop identity outside an eating disorder.
Summing up how participation on the course has become a positive experience, one service user said, “These courses have not only given me the confidence to try something different but it’s gotten me out of the house and helped me feel like I can make friends with other people.
“Not only did I learn something, but I made some friends too that will last after the course has finished.”
Deborah McCready, Project Worker for AMH EveryBODY who manages services for clients living with eating disorders said, “Through our courses participants build resilience and confidence as creative strengths are drawn out in a safe and supportive environment.
“Many clients have commented that it is not only the development of a new skill that is beneficial for their recovery, but the peer support and friendships that are built during the courses have led to some clients being able to tackle some of their social anxiety, and build a new confidence in forming supportive relationships.”
She added: “If I could offer advice to anyone reading this post during this Eating Disorder Awareness Week, who may be struggling in silence with their eating disorder, I would like to reassure them that eating disorders have no look, shape or size. I also want to remind you that you are so much more than your eating disorder. You bring value to this world simply by being you. If you are struggling today please know that your voice matters, you deserve to be heard. It is never too soon, or too late to ask for help. EveryBODY can be affected by eating disorders, so everyBODY deserves support.”
Department of Health NI estimated figures reveal that up to 20,000 individuals will be living with an eating disorder at any one time in Northern Ireland – statistics show that 16.2% of young people are screening positive for a probable eating disorder from a sample of 11 to 19 year olds. Females (23%) were significantly more likely to screen positive than males (10%). (Youth Wellbeing Survey 2022)
Right now up to 3.4 million people in the UK are living with an eating disorder. In fact recent NHS research shows that 6.4% of adults show signs of having an eating disorder and of those presenting in the UK, approximately 25% are males (priorygroup.com, 2023).
You can read more testimonials from clients who have completed the creative course and view more images of their work by visiting the online gallery below:
Today marks the start of Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and Action Mental Health’s Eating Disorder service, ‘AMH EveryBODY’, is focusing on how you can support someone who is living with or recovering from an eating disorder.
We have prepared a handy guide full of tips and advice on how to support a loved one, which you can download by visiting our resource section below.
The UK’s eating disorder charity ‘Beat’ estimates that around 1.25 million people are living with an eating disorder right now. Approximately 25% of those presenting are males, and last year, a surveyfound that more than half of men with an eating disorder have never received treatment.
Department of Health NI estimated figures reveal that up to 20,000 individuals will be living with an eating disorder at any one time in Northern Ireland, with an annual spend of £2 million dedicated to specialist eating disorder services since 2008. This excludes inpatient and treatment costs outside Northern Ireland (health-ni.gov.uk).
Eating disorders are most common in individuals between the ages of 16 and 40 years old – most develop during adolescence, although there are cases in children as young as 6 and in adults in their 70’s. (priorygroup.com, 2023).
What is an Eating Disorder?
Eating disorders are serious and complex mental disorders influenced by a range of factors. They can affect anyone of any age, gender or background. Eating disorders are not all about food itself, but about feelings. How a person interacts with food may make them feel more able to cope, or more in control.
What are the causes?
The exact cause is unknown but a combination of biological, psychological and social factors are believed to contribute to their development. Eating disorders are a coping mechanism for difficulties in that individual’s life, and are much more about feelings at the core than they are about just food or weight.
Protecting yourself during Eating Disorders Awareness Week (EDAW24)
Eating Disorders Awareness Week can bring up many difficult feelings for anyone who has ever experienced (or also supported someone with) an eating disorder. That is why we have prepared a handy guide full of tips and advice on how to support a loved one. You’ll find that, and much more in our resource section – just click on the button below.
We will be sharing content across our social media channels this week to raise awareness of eating disorders, however, we want to remind you that if you need to take a break that is fine and an essential act of self-care. Protect your recovery and that of a loved one always. You are under no obligation to share or revisit pain or trauma just because there is an awareness week or day.
Some things to consider if you do want to share:
Do I have the energy to revisit something that could be potentially distressing? Do I have support around me if I need it?
What is the intent of me sharing?
Will sharing set me back, or help me on my journey?
Will there be an impact to family and friends by sharing publicly that needs to be discussed beforehand?
Remember that whilst sharing stories for awareness is important and can encourage others to seek support, you are in control of your own story and how much you share. Do what feels best for YOU.
Further support
If you are worried about a loved one and their relationship with food, body image, or exercise habits and you think they may have an eating disorder then please encourage them to speak to their GP first. It is important to access treatment as early as possible, as earlier treatment means a greater chance of fully recovering from an eating disorder. You will find other sources of help in our resource section below.
For further information on Action Mental Health’s Eating Disorder Service, AMH EveryBODY, click here.
A recent survey found that 62% of employees experience symptoms of imposter syndrome, whilst 82% of women in business report feeling like a fraud at work. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t belong, have doubted your own competency or have felt overcome by self-doubt, know that you’re not alone.
What is ‘imposter syndrome’?
Imposter syndrome refers to feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt that persist despite objective successes. This phenomenon is particularly common in the workplace, with nearly two-thirds of employees expressing doubt related to work accomplishments or feeling inadequate compared to colleagues.
Symptoms of imposter syndrome can include:
Low self-confidence at work
Undervaluing contributions
Attributing successes to external factors
Sensitivity over minor mistakes
Self-doubt
Fear of letting colleagues down
Burnout
If any of these feelings sound familiar, you’re not alone. Following the 2020 pandemic, 47% of organisations noted a rise in employee imposter syndrome, with remote work presenting fewer opportunities to connect and celebrate success, exacerbating feelings of isolation and self-doubt. Research has also shown younger people to experience greater feelings of workplace fraudulence, with 86% of 18-34 year olds reporting feeling that they don’t deserve their jobs.
Whilst rates of professional self-doubt have grown universally in the past few years, certain industries seem to be particularly at risk. Specifically competitive sectors including creative arts, law, healthcare, journalism, IT and public services have been found to exhibit particularly high levels of imposter syndrome.
Overcoming imposter syndrome in the workplace
Imposter syndrome can cause significant damage to employees’ personal and professional lives, with research showing that employees with these feelings are less likely to career plan and move into leadership positions whilst being more likely to experience job dissatisfaction and burnout. But feelings of fraudulence don’t have to last forever. Here are three actionable steps anyone can take to turn around self-defeating thoughts:
Assess the evidence
When you start to notice that little voice creep in and tell you that you’re not good enough, it’s time to get out your notebook and challenge that inner critic. We recommend making a simple 2-colomn list- on one side you can write down evidence that supports your inner critic, on the other side write down evidence which disproves your inner critic. Whilst challenging thoughts can also feel factual, taking this objective approach is a helpful way to combat self-doubt by acknowledging and reflecting on proof of your own competency.
Keep an achievements log
As a society, we’re often hard-wired to focus on our failures rather than celebrating our successes. Whilst it may feel uncomfortable to acknowledge your strengths, doing so has been proven to boost resilience and self-esteem. We recommend keeping a daily record of the compliments you receive and the achievements you make. At the end of each week, set time aside to reflect on what has gone well.
Accept positive feedback
Another way to reinforce your own strengths and silence your inner critic involves learning to consciously accept positive feedback. Whilst it can feel instinctive to deny or dismiss praise from others’, we challenge you to instead say “thank you” and give yourself the opportunity to internalize others’ positive perspectives.
How can managers support their teams with reducing imposter syndrome?
Individual employees can take meaningful and powerful steps to overcome self-doubt, but to truly tackle imposter syndrome, organizational change is often needed. As a manager or leader, you can uplift your team and reduce levels of imposter syndrome with the following strategies:
Leverage strength based evaluations
Imposter syndrome can be an indicator that an employee feels overwhelmed by their responsibilities or needs to be reminded of their strengths. Utilise strength based evaluations to create frequent dialogues about the employees strengths, using concrete evidence to support your praise and positive feedback. During these conversations, set weekly and monthly goals that can be worked towards and reviewed collaboratively to avoid overwhelm. These conversations can also be an opportunity to identify where an employee’s areas of opportunity and provide additional training and support to further develop their strengths and skill set.
Make it safe to ask for help
When an employee is feeling fraudulent, as if they don’t deserve their job or as though they’re incompetent compared to colleagues, it’s often difficult for them to admit to needing support and guidance with work-related tasks. Instead, many employees will struggle in silence, overworking themselves to conceal any self-perceived flaws. The first step in creating a safe space for employees to ask for help involves examining your own beliefs as a manager. Do you treat your employees as if they are capable and competent? Do you trust them to overcome challenges? Challenging your own beliefs creates a means to communicate that you believe in your staff and want to support them to succeed. You can also create a safer environment by acknowledging your own vulnerabilities and creating a dialogue surrounding the stressors and impact of the work your team do.
Prioritise staff mental health in the workplace
Research has consistently found that people who struggle with imposter syndrome are more likely to experience mental health issues including anxiety and depression. When these individuals experience failure, they often suffer from low self-esteem and feel dissatisfied with their lives and careers. Therefore, supporting mental wellbeing is central to ensuring that staff are able to build self-efficacy and positive purpose from their work lives. Some ways to promote positive wellbeing within your team include investing in an organizational wellbeing service, having accessible signposts to expert help and ensuring that regular staff wellbeing trainings are available to all employees.
How AMH Works can help to create healthier and more resilient workplaces
AMH Works is a mental health training and consultancy service working with some of Northern Ireland and the UK’s leading organisations. Our programmes teach the skills needed to support and maintain healthy resilient workplaces for every level of employee. Our programmes have a proven positive impact on health and wellness, reducing sickness absence and can help to make your workplace a more effective and resilient place to work. Our mental wellbeing training programmes include:
Mindful Manager
Mental Health Awareness
Personal Resilience
Stress Awareness and Management
Compassionate Conversations
Mental Health First Aid
SafeTALK
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST)
To find out more about how AMH Works can support your organisation, visit our service page.
Rachel, a member of the AMH Youth Panel, shares some of her story and her hopes for children and young people.
Hi, happy Children’s Mental Health Week! My name is Rachel and I’m one of the members of Action Mental Health’s youth panel.
I signed up to be a member of the youth panel because I’ve been passionate about mental health campaigning since I was around 15. My own experiences of mental ill health as a teenager made me want to get involved in work that can help other young people who may be struggling like I was.
I’ve seen the impact of mental illness and suicide in my family and my community from a young age, and I always want to get involved in advocating for early intervention, which includes further mental health support and awareness for children and young people.
A bit about my journey
To mark Children’s Mental Health Week, I wanted to write a bit about my experiences of being neurodivergent and how this has impacted my mental health, both when I was a child, and also as a young person.
For as long as I can remember I have struggled with my mental health. As a child I thought something was ‘wrong’ with the way my brain worked and I struggled to put my emotions into words. I was easily anxious and overwhelmed as a child, but I was unsure of how to communicate this.
I became further withdrawn as a teenager and engaged in unhealthy coping mechanisms, again in an attempt to express what I couldn’t put into words.
I received support from CAMHs in secondary school to cope with anxiety and depression.
I continued to battle with my mental health throughout university, and whilst I was getting help, after years of going in and out of cycles of depression, I was starting to think that this was just the way my brain worked.
It wasn’t until I was 20 years old that I was assessed and diagnosed with autism. After a psychiatrist suggested I had traits of it, things started to become clearer. The more I researched about autism, and the more I read about the co-occurrence of autism and mental health problems, the more things started to click into place.
I struggled a lot initially with the frustration of not being diagnosed earlier. I started to wonder whether an earlier diagnosis would have meant that I would not have struggled so much with my mental health. Ultimately, I recognised that I was grieving for a scenario that I could not make come true, but I could change how I felt about myself and my identity going forward, and I could keep sharing my experience to others.
The underdiagnosis of autism in women and girls
Unfortunately, my story is not an uncommon one. The National Autistic Society launched a campaign in November 2022 called “Now I know” which specifically tells the stories of women and nonbinary people who were late diagnosed autistic and their journey to getting there. They write that ‘Various studies suggest that the ratio of autistic males to females ranges from 2:1 to 16:1. The most-up-to-date estimate is 3:1’.
Some research suggests that one of the reasons for this underdiagnosis in girls is because one of the traits of autism called ‘masking’ is more predominantly seen in girls. This is essentially when an autistic person is able to mask or hide parts of themselves in order to fit in. I believe that because of the fact that I was able to due well in school (granted, I struggled too), I fell through the cracks.
I always try to bring neurodivergence into the room when I’m discussing anything mental health, because I truly believe the two are so interlinked, and you cannot wish to make one better without addressing the other.
Where I am now
At 22, I am doing so much better than I ever believed possible. Finding out that I was autistic allowed me to learn more about the way my brain works and allowed me to explore parts of my identity that were previously closed off.
Whilst I still struggle with things, I have learned to develop patience with myself and to prioritise my needs.
I managed to complete my degree and start a masters, and work for a charity like I always wanted to. Learning to accept that having a difference does not make you any less worthy of love, success and joy was what really helped me put things into perspective.
I am so much more confident now in who I am an what I stand for, and I hope to use my voice to help others who haven’t found theirs yet.
My hopes for children’s mental health
Based on my experiences and what I’ve learned about neurodivergence, my hopes are that mental health education will be taught more widely to children. This could be something as simple as teaching children how to identify their emotions, positive and negative, and helping them build up skills to cope with challenging situations.
A huge point towards supporting neurodivergent children’s mental health is making the education system more accessible. Of course, this is not something that can be done overnight, but I think it’s important that we are aware of what we can and should be doing to support children’s mental health.
One example is trying to stop the weight that we put on children to have perfect attendance. Ways to be more accessible to autistic children or adults is to create various learning opportunities, as not everyone’s brain works the same way.
If you’ve read this far, thank you for listening to my story. If you also feel strongly about the need for further children’s mental health awareness and education, you can check out Action Mental Health for resources and to find out how to get involved.
Where to get autism support
If you or someone you love is struggling with similar issues that I have talked about in this article, you are not alone. Here is a list of places that you can contact to get support with autism:
One of the simplest things we can do to take care of our minds is BREATHING.
Regular practice of breathing exercises can change the way we think and feel; it can affect our heart rate, lower blood pressure, reduce stress levels and combat anxiety.
Whether it’s taking a few deep breaths to help regulate when a child’s experiencing some big emotions, taking some time to wind down before bed time, to help feel ready for school or just to build some mindful rhythms into your routine, breathing intentionally can really help.
The following activity makes deep and mindful breathing engaging and accessible to young children (although will benefit people of all ages!). This is rainbow breathing.
Make sure you have space around you to stretch your arms out wide and high.
We’re going to imagine that we’re painting a huge rainbow in the sky – and your fingers are the paintbrushes!
Start by stretching your arms out wide to each side of your body – like this:
Perhaps you want to give your fingers a little wiggle to wake them up!
Take a deep, slow breath in, and as you do, raise and curve your arms to make an arch shape – just like a rainbow.
Breathe out slowly, and lower your arms.
That’s our red layer of our rainbow painted – how many other colours shall we do?
Repeat this breathing exercise as many times as is helpful and engaging for your child. You could do seven repetitions, one for every colour of the rainbow. You could simplify it with just their favourite three colours. Or you could draw the activity out, and ask your child to think of as many wacky colours as they can!
(If you’d like to learn more about the positive effects of breathing exercises, we like this episode of Just One Thing with Michael Mosely on BBC Sounds!).
It’s so important that all children know who they can turn to when they need help. Children need adults who they can trust will keep them safe.
‘Healthy hand’ is a quick and simple tool to help children (and perhaps adults, too!) identify who they can turn to for help if ever they need it.
Hold your hand out in front of you and stretch your fingers wide.
Count your fingers, and as you do, name someone who you could ask for help if you needed it. (You might want to help the child remember some of the grownups in their life, but don’t be afraid to let them sit in quiet and think for themselves.
For example:
Point to your thumb – that’s one. We can go to Granny for help.
Point to your index finger – that’s two. We can ask our teacher.
Point to your middle finger – that’s number three. We can ask our swimming coach for help.
Point to your ring finger – that’s four. We can go to our neighbour, Mary.
Point to your pinky finger – that’s number five. We can ask the lady who works at the library.
Five fingers makes a helping hand!
If you’re a member of staff in a school and would like to explore more tips and techniques for promoting wellbeing and resilience in children and young people, check out Action Mental Health’s MensSana service. Our experienced and committed team can run a variety of different programmes in your school, catering to pupils of all ages.
Here at Action Mental Health, we believe that every child matters.
Recent studies show that 1 in 8 children in Northern Ireland experience emotional difficulties.[1] That’s three children in every classroom[2].
These figures are stark. Mental health services have been under-resourced for a long time in Northern Ireland, and too many children and young people aren’t getting the help they need.
But we know that a different story is possible for children and young people. Evidence shows us that empowering children and young people can have a profoundly positive impact on their health and wellbeing. For example, children and young people who feel that their voices are heard, and that what they say makes a difference, have higher levels of self-efficacy and self-esteem.[3] We know that there are so many tools and techniques that can help children look after their minds as well as their bodies – we’re so please that our AMH MensSana team are able to share these tips and techniques with so many children and young people every year.
We’re delighted to be participating in Children’s Mental Health Week 2024, an awareness week launched by Place2Be to empower, equip and give a voice to every child in the UK.
This year’s theme is “My Voice Matters”. Action Mental Health with be joining with others all over the UK to make it clear that we want all children and young people, whoever they are, and wherever they are in the world, to be able to say – and believe – “My Voice Matters”.
Over the course of the week (5-11 February 2024), we’ll be sharing content on our social media channels, all relating to children and young people’s mental health. With videos to watch, activities to enjoy at home, fundraising ideas and content created by our very own Action Mental Health Youth Panel, there will be so much for you to enjoy and get involved with as together we seek to celebrate and amplify the voices of children and young people in Northern Ireland and support their mental health and wellbeing.
We’ve compiled an online library filled with our blogs, videos and activities relating to children and young people’s mental health. You can view that here.
So, follow along and get involved this week – share with your family, your friends, your neighbours, your church, your class, your community group.
Join us in making it loud and clear to children and young people across Northern Ireland that their voice matters. Because every child matters.
[1] Bunting, L., McCartan, C., Davidson, G., Grant, A., McBride, O., Mulholland, C., Murphy, J., Schubotz, D., Cameron, J. & Shevlin, M., (2020). The Mental Health of Children and Parents in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Health & Social Care Board. https:// online.hscni.net/our-work/social-careand-children/youth-wellbeing-prevalencesurvey-2020/ [Accessed January 2024].
