Eating disorders

What is it?

Community services are generally provided by not-for-profit organisations and include education, support and treatment around eating disorders.

If you’re working towards your recovery goals, community services can help you through counselling, helplines, support groups, psychoeducation and peer support.

What can someone expect?

These are the common types of support offered by community services.

• Counselling allows you to explore your underlying issues with skilled practitioners in a safe, therapeutic and confidential environment. This can be in person or via telehealth (e.g. phone, video).
• Helplines offer free and relatively immediate support, brief intervention or provision of information from a trained counsellor over the phone or online.
• Therapeutic groups create a safe environment and sense of community through sharing and hearing stories. Groups may be held in person or online.
• Psychoeducation groups provide opportunities to learn strategies for coping and recovery skills across a range of topics relating to eating disorders.
• Peer support is delivered by peer workers who support people based on their own lived experience and knowledge of eating disorder recovery. This can include peer support groups or individual peer mentoring.

Community services will often encourage you to have regular appointments with your GP as well as regularly engaging with their services.

Community services generally take a recovery-oriented approach. This recognises that individuals, their families and carers recover at their own pace. Community services recognise the importance of medical and clinical services in recovery while offering non-clinical services alongside or as an alternative to a medical approach. Your care approach will depend on what works best for you.

If you have acute medical needs or are experiencing a crisis, community services are likely to connect you with an appropriate service and work closely with your treatment team to ensure your needs are met.

Who is this for?

Community services can help you work towards your recovery goals if you are medically stable.

You can benefit from community services in addition to medical and clinical services.

How can someone access it?

Eating Disorders Queensland (EDQ) provides a range of support services and programs for people working towards their recovery goals.

Contact EDQ’s Care Navigator for information on available services by emailing admin@edq.org.au or by calling 07 3844 6055.

• Group support and rehabilitation
• Individual peer work
• Group-based peer work
  
• Individual carer support
• Group carer support
• Structured psychological therapies
• Brief intervention therapies
  

Butterfly Foundation offers community services for people anywhere in Australia.

• Virtual Support Groups are facilitated by trained peer facilitators who have lived experience of eating disorders.
• Virtual Support Programs offer support, guidance and the tools to deal with challenges and to help with recovery.