Eating disorders are often misunderstood, yet they can have devastating impacts on individuals and their families.
Katie Maycock, founder of GYST Well-being, sits on R;pple’s advisory board for eating disorders. In this candid interview, Katie shares her personal journey with an eating disorder, the challenges she faced in accessing support, and how these experiences led her to advocate for better awareness and intervention. Katie discusses the crucial role of technology in mental health and suicide prevention, the importance of workplace support, and what we can all do to foster greater understanding and compassion.
Katie's company, GYST Well-being, focuses on working with organisations to help drive performance and profitability and to support their people. She is working with companies to ensure staff can manage their stress and prevent burnout.
Can you share a bit about your background and experience with eating disorders?
At the age of 15, I developed an eating disorder. It became a hidden shame within my family, which lasted for 7 years. The biggest dilemma I faced when having an ED was when I finally had enough at the age of 19, I reached out for help.
I was desperate and when I finally got in touch with the correct services, I didn’t meet their physical criteria. This was absolutely heartbreaking because it felt like I wasn’t “sick enough” for help.
This led me down the path to talk about my journey and what that meant for me. To educate people who don’t understand what an eating disorder truly is and what that can mean to the person as well as the family.
In your experience, what are the biggest challenges faced by people struggling with eating disorders?
A couple of things, first the access to support.
A lot of people are on lengthy waitlists to receive help, which can be extremely distressing for the person as well as the family, especially if that family can’t access private support.
With eating disorders and how they can be easily misunderstood can definitely be a challenge. Many people think that having an eating disorder is all about being skinny, when it’s not. It’s a truly horrific mental health issues that needs to be addressed as so.
And I think a lot of eating disorders can go unchecked for many people, which can increase the risk of suicidal ideations.
How do eating disorders increase the risk of suicide? What are some of the signs?
Eating disorders created disordered thinking. Many people who have eating disorders will talk about the “voice” that accompanies it. This “voice” is extremely negatives and creates a huge amount of distress to the person.
With that in mind, thinking about the risk to suicide, having an eating disorder can absolutely increase the risk.
From my own experience, I hated it. I didn’t want to feel the way I felt but I didn’t know how to break the cycle.
When we’re looking at the signs, these can include:
- Withdrawal
- A significant change in eating habits
- Changes in behaviour (more frustration, anger, etc)
- Speaking more openly about feeling hopelessness
How can employers better support their staff struggling with eating disorders?
Having an understanding and some form of education on what an eating disorder is and the different types of eating disorders is incredibly important. The mental health first aide course has a section on this, so having MHFA’s can be a great start.
If your company has access to company funded counselling or an EPA, making sure that every employee knows how to access those services.
Whether that’s onboarding or frequent internal marketing of what the company offers can be really useful.
Please note: Not every “skinny” person has an eating disorder and not all eating disorders are easy to spot. So please don’t make an assumption simply by the way someone looks.
Also, approaching someone with an eating disorder can a really challenging task to do because many sufferers are extremely ashamed and embarrassed of what they’re going through. So always approach with kindness and don’t be accusatory.
Are there particular industries where eating disorders are more prevalent or have a greater impact?
We can go with the most common industries which are professional athletes, models and fashion models due to the nature of those industries.
However, I think something to understand is that eating disorders aren’t just about weight and the way you look. They can very much be in response to high stress, trauma and pressure.
We saw a big spike in eating disorders during COVID, so it’s not always industries, it can also be societal changes that we have to be aware of.
What does your role as a R;pple advisory board member involve?
Firstly, I wanted to say what a privilege this role is, so thank you to the team at R;pple!
My role is and has been working with the team to look at dangerous key phrases or words that people can put into a search engine that can be harmful or even give those people access to harmful content/information.
I am also their spokesperson sharing my story to spread awareness of eating disorders but also how R;pple can support individuals and families.
Why is it important for R;pple to expand its protection to those struggling with eating disorders?
What is terrifying is the number of pro-eating disorder websites there are that share extremely dangerous information, so being able to be the buffer between that content and the people suffering is so important.
Not only that, there are so many websites, blogs and social media sights that are target to “weight loss” and these platforms can truly be causing a huge amount of damage to the wrong people.
Having R;pple to intervene can be extremely helpful, especially when there are orgnanisations that can be signposted to.
How do you see technology playing a role in mental health and suicide prevention, now and in the future?
I think it has to be the way forward. There is a certain level of responsibility that technology has played in exacerbating eating disorders so using technology as way to combat that is going to be imperative.
Now we just need social media websites to follow suit…
If there’s one key message you’d like to share about supporting individuals with eating disorders, what would it be?
Eating disorders are a lot more complex than what society can understand. Eating disorders are a mental health disorder and they’re extremely challenging to overcome. I think it’s easy to make a snap decision on someone because of the way they look or even comment on how someone looks without really understanding what’s happening on the inside. Being mindful that you don’t always know what’s going on in that persons life.
We’ve all seen the #bekind campaigns and posts, but truly, this is what we need.
Enter every conversation with empathy and keep flexing that empathetic curiosity muscle!
Any final thoughts on how we, as a society, can do better in mental health support and suicide prevention?
It’s truly amazing to see such a shift on how people are speaking about mental health and trying to reduce the stigma about the conversation.
As a society, we need to be looking at more actionable strategies we can implement to support more people. Providing education is great, but practical support is what’s going to make the biggest difference.
What are things you can be implementing on a day to day, weekly or monthly basis to make actionable changes to your your teams, colleagues, friends, loved ones mental health?
Let’s keep the conversation alive and let’s keep putting the right actionable plans in place!
