The Eating Awareness Team is a professional community-based organisation, providing a free counselling, information and education service to people with eating disorders and food and body image issues. EAT has a long history of providing these services and has become an important service in both the Canterbury region and the wider South Island – we are the only service of our kind of the South Island.
The service is able to provide vital early intervention for people with disordered eating and body image difficulties, delivering counselling and education services that support people to manage and overcome these issues before they develop in severity, and supporting people through referral processes to clinical services when necessary. The service also provides support and counselling services to people who have been struggling with eating disorders and difficulties for some time, giving consistent support to help people to manage their daily lives and to make life enhancing, positive changes. Wherever possible, EAT strives to involve families in the support and counselling process and to also educate and support families while their child/partner is affected by an eating disorder/ difficulty.
The counsellors at EAT see approximately 25-30 clients a week, including the families of youth clients. EAT is well known amongst GPs, mental health services and other counselling services, including school guidance counsellors, and we frequently receive referrals from these services. Individuals and families are also able to self-refer to the service. At the present time, our counselling and support services are stretched to maximum capacity and we have had to institute a waiting list.
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