Eating Distress Service

What is the EDTS?
Shropshire’s Eating Distress Therapy Service was established in 2001, as a part of the adult mental health services within Shropshire County NHS PCT. The ETDS comprises a team of trained and experienced professionals, from a variety of disciplines, who are passionate about working together for quality and excellence in helping people who experience eating distress, as well as those close to them.

Why Eating “Distress”?
Before the EDTS was even in its planning stage, the involvement of people who actually experience eating distress was seen as fundamental to the ethos of this work. Service participants have therefore had, and continue to have, a very strong voice in the shape and function of every aspect of the service. At the outset, service participants expressed the view that they would prefer a title for the service which described their experience, rather than gave them a diagnostic label, and all those involved agreed to support this view. This means that, with the full support of Shropshire County NHS PCT’s forward-thinking senior management, the EDTS is the only NHS service in the country with the courage to adopt the descriptive phrase “eating distress”, rather than the medical diagnostic term “eating disorder”. The EDTS continues to adhere strongly to principles of informed choice, service participant involvement, and the right of every individual to be treated with dignity and respect.

What does the EDTS do?
The Eating Distress Therapy Service, as the name implies, primarily focuses on being able to offer individuals experiencing all forms of eating distress a range of psychological, dietetic and supportive therapies in the community to enable them to free themselves from the dual prisons of fear of food and fear of their own bodies, without having to resort to hospitalisation. The service, however, does a lot more than that, which includes training and supervising other people who work with eating distress, in order to help them improve their own skills. The service is also available to anyone for advice and information about any aspect of eating distress. And the service carries out research and evaluation in the constant attempt to improve the quality and effectiveness of work in the area of eating distress. A brief description of EDTS work follows but, if you would like more detailed information, please contact us for a copy of our Information Booklet.

One-to-One Therapies
The EDTS team comprises individuals with skills and training in a range of psychological therapies, so that we are able to offer service participants as far as possible a choice in how they wish to tackle their experience of eating distress, as well as choice in gender and age of therapist.
- Psychodynamic therapy: a general name for approaches that look for hidden patterns and meanings in what a person says, how she relates to them, and how this links with other problematic relationships in her life, aiming to influence deep layers of her personality.
- Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy: a practical approach in which service participant and therapist work together on the individual’s thoughts and how they affect their feelings and behaviour.
- Cognitive-Analytic Therapy: brings together ideas from both psychodynamic and cognitive-behaviour therapies, to help individuals look at and change how they deal with difficult feelings.
- Individual Therapy for Women Only: focuses on how gender roles influence females’ development from birth onwards, with a view to empowering women and helping them to discover their own identity, free from the limitations of traditional roles and expectations.
- Couple and Family Therapy: looks at relational issues and how these impact on someone as an individual, in the context of their family, and/or in the context of their relationship with their partner.
- Person-Centred Counselling: places the individual at the centre of the therapeutic relationship, believing that they can increase their awareness within an environment of empathy and genuineness, leading to changes for them and their life.
- Dietetic Therapy: offers advice and support to help individuals eat healthy, varied meals and snacks, helps with situations in which people find it difficult to eat, and helps with issues related to body weight.

Group Therapies
As well as or instead of one-to-one work, service participants may have the opportunity to participate in various groups.
- Analytic Group Therapy: usually quite long-term, these groups give people the chance to change their views about food and their bodies, by enabling them to express feelings and to connect present behaviour with past experiences, and also to spot the drives underlying their behaviours and affecting relationships. Most frequently these groups are for individuals recovering from a period of very low body weight.
- Psycho-educational Group Therapy: based on cognitive-behaviour therapy, they are practical groups lasting usually 16 weeks with an element of education, which include work on thoughts, feelings and behaviour in the weeks between group sessions. These groups can be helpful for individuals with problems around binge-eating, which may or may not involve difficulty keeping food in.
- Body Image Group: offers a safe space where people who feel uncomfortable or unhappy in their own bodies can explore how they relate to their bodies, and creatively experiment with body-related issues in a relaxed and accepting atmosphere.
- Other Groups: can be offered from time to time, depending on need. These have included, for example, Understanding Ourselves and Others, a ten-session closed group exploring some of the wider issues in people’s lives in order to make sense of some of their experiences. Another example is the Open Drop-in Support Group, which creates a safe space and time for any EDTS service participant to find support from other service participants and one or two members of the team.
- Workshops: occasionally the EDTS is able to offer one-day or half-day workshops on topics such as: relaxation, anxiety management, assertiveness, complimentary therapies, yoga, and so forth.

Training and Supervision
The EDTS responds to all requests for any form of training and supervision on any aspect of eating distress or related issues - if we can’t do it ourselves, we know a woman/man who can! These can range from occasional one-hour sessions offered to, for example, General Practices, junior doctors, student nurses, volunteers - to full-day workshops and short courses. Once a year, the EDTS offers its very popular “Counselling Skills for Eating Distress” course, which consists of four half-day sessions over three weeks and a follow-up half-day session about six to eight weeks later. The aim here is to enhance those factors considered to be most important in working with eating distress, which are the core conditions of empathy, genuineness and acceptance. All training and supervision offered by the EDTS to the public, statutory or voluntary sectors is free of charge. Please feel free to contact us directly for any interest in a training event, which we try to tailor to every individual request.

Consultancy
All members of the EDTS are keen to make themselves available for consultation, information and advice, from professionals, volunteers and members of the public. Some of us are also stars of stage, screen and the media, and have appeared on both Radio Shropshire and Beacon Radio quite regularly! Another aspect of our consultancy role is our regular Parents, Partners, Families and Friends (PPFF) open evenings, which we hold once every two months. Usually there is a speaker or topic, members of the team available, and the opportunity is there for people to gain support and information from others in similar situations. Anyone who has a query connected to any aspect of eating distress is welcome to contact us directly.

Research
We have a strong belief in the importance of research, in order to constantly improve the work we are doing, understand more about the experiences of eating distress, and ultimately be able to offer the highest possible quality of service. The EDTS Annual Report contains information about the most recent research activities, some of which are described briefly below. As with all other aspects of EDTS work, the involvement of service participants at all stages of a research project is crucial. All research is subject to stringent conditions laid down by local ethics committees, which proposals must pass before being allowed to be undertaken. Confidentiality, choice and respect for research participants are always of paramount importance.
- Evaluation and review of a body image group for eating distress.
- Qualitative analyses of therapists’ experiences of working with eating distress.
- The impact of a therapist’s body size and shape on individuals receiving psychological therapy for eating distress: a qualitative study. (In association with the Clinical Psychology Department, University of Liverpool.)
- Qualitative evaluation of awareness of EDTS staff, role, function amongst Clinical Psychologists working in Community Mental Health Teams.
- Audit of case file data for individuals experiencing eating distress referred to specialist in-patient units outside of Shropshire, and a qualitative evaluation of such individuals’ experiences.

Who's who in the EDTS?

Counselling Course - October 2006

HOW TO CONTACT US:
Eating Distress Therapy Service,
The Lodge,
Chaddeslode House
01743-343623

EDTS Annual report 05-06

Links:
Eating Disorders Association