Enhancing professional skills for early identification

It is a known fact that prolonged duration of an eating disorder is likely to have harmful physical and psychological effects and can make recovery less likely. Despite this, the eating disorder field has been slow to implement the concept of early intervention.

Improving eating disorder health literacy of those in the medical, educational and health sectors is vital to increasing early identification of people in the formative stages of an eating disorder or who are at risk of developing an eating disorder.

Of particular importance is the training and supervision of generalist inpatient/outpatient mental health services in assessing and treating people with eating disorders .