15 September 2021 – A report investigating investment in eating disorder research in the UK has been published today.
Major advances are needed in our understanding of what causes eating disorders, how best to treat them and ideally how to prevent them developing. Without this, eating disorders will continue to represent a significant public health issue, devastating millions of lives while leading to high costs to the NHS and the UK economy. The impacts of COVID-19 on demand for eating disorder services means that the need for advances in knowledge and innovation through research is more urgent than ever.
The ‘Breaking the Cycle’ report, compiled by Beat on behalf of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Eating Disorders sets out the findings and recommendations from the APPG’s inquiry into research funding, conducted from December 2020 to Spring 2021.
Despite the prevalence and severity of eating disorders, they receive very little research funding. Total UK investment amounted to just £1.13 per person affected per year between 2009 and 2019. Eating disorders account for around 9% of the total number of people with a mental health condition in the UK, but from 2015-2019, they accounted for just 1% of the UK’s already severely limited mental health research funding. The inquiry found that a historic lack of investment has led to a vicious cycle. As a result, there are few active researchers and research centres in the UK and therefore little research is published. This has helped stigmatising attitudes persist, which reinforce the small capacity of the field and its lack of funding.
The report makes recommendations for actions that research funders, universities, the NHS and researchers should take to break the cycle of underfunding in eating disorder research and achieve the much-needed advances in knowledge that research can deliver.