Your journey with The Eating Disorder Service

The first step is to complete our registration form. Once we receive this, a member of our clinical team will review your information and recommend the assessment most appropriate for your individual needs.

However, if you have already received advice and would like to book a clinician-Led assessment, these can be booked online by clicking here.

We offer two types of initial assessment: Clinician-led and Consultant Psychiatrist-led.

One of the main differences is that only a Consultant Psychiatrist-led assessment can result in a formal diagnosis, where clinically appropriate. Both assessment types provide a comprehensive understanding of your needs and include recommendations for the most appropriate treatment and clinicians.

Both assessment types are designed to help us build a thorough understanding of your current concerns, your personal history, and the support that is likely to be most beneficial.

During the assessment, we will ask about your early development, medical history, family history, educational and work experiences, and your future goals. We will also explore how your current difficulties developed, how they have changed over time, and the factors that may be contributing to them.

As part of the assessment, we will record your current height and weight and may also check your blood pressure, temperature, and pulse.

Using this information, we will develop a holistic understanding of your circumstances to inform the treatment approach best suited to your needs.

The assessment also includes psychoeducation about eating disorders, along with practical guidance on the first steps towards recovery.

If your assessment is with our Consultant Psychiatrist, you may receive a formal diagnosis where clinically appropriate.

Where possible, we will recommend the clinicians best suited to your ongoing care during the appointment. In some cases, your assessment may need to be discussed by our multidisciplinary team before recommendations are made. If this is the case, we will contact you shortly afterwards with our recommendations.

Following your assessment, you will receive any relevant letters or reports, together with your personalised treatment plan and recommendations for care at the clinic.

This will depend on your individual situation. Where possible we will try to minimise this and all our clinicians are extremely experienced at supporting recovery. However there may be times when it is required as part of a treatment plan. 

The clinical rationale will be discussed with you along with suggested clinicians to see and appointment frequency.

Both the assessment options are designed to create an understanding of the condition being experienced by the individual, however the only person able to formally diagnose an eating disorder is a Consultant Psychiatrist. 

If you are attending a clinician assessment we will offer an explanation as to what diagnostic threshold the symptoms you are experiencing are meeting, however this would not be a formal diagnosis.

It is helpful to bring a short food diary from the previous 3 days.

If you have had any relevant previous assessments it would be helpful to send this to the clinic prior to your appointment so that the assessing clinician can review it. 

Depending on the assessed medical risk you may be asked to visit your GP to get bloods and an ECG prior to your appointment but this will be discussed with you if required.

Recovery is a journey and can take some time. Factors that will impact this are condition type, psychological distress, length of illness, motivation to recover, starting body weight.

There are national clinical guidelines which offer evidence based treatment options and guidance on treatment type and length. This can be between 10-40 sessions. This will be discussed at your initial assessment and ongoing with the clinicians that you work with.

All our clinicians are extremely experienced at interpreting and managing risk. However in order to ensure that all clients have safe experience at the clinic we are not able to hold certain levels of medical risk. Where possible we will try to facilitate shared care with safe levels of medical risk with GPs or Consultants. 

At present we cannot support adult individuals with a BMI under 14.5kg/m2.

Any young people below a weight for height percentage of 75% will be considered case by case with evaluation of wider risk factors and medical stability.