What to Expect

Your First Appointment

After we receive your referral, our administrator will contact you by text, phone, email, and/or post to arrange for you to attend a screening appointment. Generally, we text people about their appointments unless they prefer otherwise.
Your screening appointment may take place at our building or over Zoom, depending on availability and your preference.
We are located at 104 Kennerley Road, Davenport, SK2 6EY. We have our own parking lot around the side of the building. We are also right next to the Davenport train station, and near lots of bus routes, if you are coming on public transport.
There are four stairs to get into our building with a handrail. Unfortunately, it is not wheelchair accessible. If you would prefer a face to face appointment and you are a wheelchair user, we can arrange your screening appointment in an accessible building. We have two ground-floor consulting rooms and a ground-floor toilet.
Your screening appointment will last around an hour (or 2 hours if you are on our FREED pathway).
If you are attending on Zoom, please make sure you will have a fully private, quiet space available for the entire duration of your appointment.
If you have any sensory needs, or if there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable when coming to our service, please let our administrator know. We have various fidget toys in all the consulting rooms and in the waiting room.
You do not need to bring anything with you.
If you would like to bring a supportive person with you, you are welcome to.
If you feel you need a break during the appointment, please do ask for one.
During the screening appointment, we will ask specific questions about your eating disorder, mental health, and physical health, as well as your goals and wishes from treatment. You will also be asked to fill in 4 or 5 questionnaires about your mental health. We will ask to weigh you, or for you to weigh yourself if your appointment is virtual. You will have opportunities to ask questions and raise any concerns. We will take a collaborative approach with you to determine, mutually, if our service is the right support for you right now.
After your screening appointment, you might feel tired, sad, anxious, upset, or overwhelmed. This is common for many people as this may have been the first time you've spoken or thought about your eating difficulties in depth, which can bring up some strong emotions. If you need support after the screening appointment, please refer to our 'Resources' page, or the email you received after your appointment. You can also get in touch with our administrator via text or phone call who can direct you to appropriate help.

Our Waiting Room

Therapy Sessions

When starting eating disorder therapy, you might feel a mixture of hope and nervousness. It’s common for people to find the start of treatment to be a bit overwhelming.

Treatment for eating disorders focuses on building a healthier relationship with food and your body. Your therapist specializes in understanding eating disorders and how they impact people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. They'll help you explore and understand your relationship with food, as well as your relationship with yourself. Together, you'll work on understanding the underlying factors contributing to your struggles with eating, with the main focus on what’s going on right now in your life that is keeping your eating disorder going.

A key part of treatment for your eating disorder is keeping a ‘food and mood diary’ so that you and your therapist can work together to identify and address patterns and pitfalls, as well as what’s going well. Weighing in-session with your therapist is also an essential part of treatment to keep track of your physical health.

Sessions last 50 minutes, and usually involve discussing eating habits and meal patterns, as well as thoughts and emotions. It's a collaborative process where you will set specific goals to work towards, and learn practical strategies to challenge or cope with unhelpful thoughts and behaviours. It's common to experience an increase in anxiety and low mood at the start of treatment, as you and your therapist start to address your difficulties head-on and transition to new coping skills. You can expect to receive support, empathy, and guidance to cultivate a kinder relationship with yourself and develop coping mechanisms tailored to your needs. The journey is yours to foster a more positive relationship with food, your body, and yourself.

Treatments & Pathways

CBT-E: For all Eating Disorders

CBT-E is the abbreviation for “enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy”, and is one of the most effective treatments for eating disorders. It is a “transdiagnostic” treatment for all forms of eating disorder including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and other eating disorders. CBT-E isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” treatment - it is highly individualised. You and your therapist will create a specific version of CBT-E to match your specific eating problems and other therapy goals. Usually, CBT-E is conducted over around 12 sessions, but can range from 4-40. You will be asked to complete homework every week, in the form of keeping a diary of what you eat and how you feel, and completing various activities like worksheets or 'food challenges'.

Safe Living Track

The safe living track is a year-long support offer for people who are currently unwilling or unable to commit to recovery-focused therapy for their eating disorder. The Safe Living track is not therapy but is therapeutic, and focuses on harm reduction and social recovery, as well as helping you establish and maintain a safe and stable baseline in your mental and physical health. It takes a holistic approach to working with you as a whole person, attending to your eating disorder as well as overall mental/physical health needs.

MANTRA: For Anorexia

MANTRA is a specialist integrative therapy that has been developed specifically for the treatment of anorexia nervosa. MANTRA consists of seven core modules conducted over 20-40 sessions. MANTRA aims to address the cognitive, emotional, relational and biological factors which tend to maintain anorexia by working out what keeps people stuck in their anorexia, and gradually helping them to find alternative and more adaptive ways of coping. You and your therapist will work together on the aspects of your eating difficulties that you feel are the most relevant and/or problematic for you, with a view to making lasting changes that will improve your overall quality of life. MANTRA therapy homework often involves writing activities like completing worksheets or letter-writing.

Dietetics

Our dietitian has created a four-session video course called 'Eating for Recovery' which delivers foundational information about nutrition as well as explores social factors which can impact people's relationship with food and their body.

Individual dietetics appointments are also on offer to people who need additional tailored support with their nutrition, such as our patients with ARFID.

CBT-AR: For ARFID

CBT-AR is similar to CBT-E, but designed specifically for people with ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) to help you increase the variety and amount of food you are eating, and decrease your negative feelings towards food and eating experiences. This is also a treatment that will be individually developed in collaboration between you and the therapist to target and work on your specific goals as much as possible. There is a big focus on education about nutrition, eating, and food. You will be asked to complete homework every week, in the form of keeping a diary of what you eat and how you feel, and completing ctivities such as 'food challenges'.

CBT-T Group

The evidence shows that CBT-T is suitable for adults of all genders who live with Binge Eating Disorder or Bulimia. CBT-T is a time-limited, focused therapy. It starts by addressing your safety, then aims to help you change your eating, your beliefs about food, and your body image. It should also help you to reduce any anxiety and other emotional concerns.The group treatment programme is 10 weekly sessions. Each session lasts for 2 hours. There will be work to do every day for the duration of the course. Change is hard work and will take daily practice; we know that if you engage fully with CBT-T during sessions and in between them, you have the best possible chance of a full recovery.