Background

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rates among psychiatric conditions. It is imperative that health professionals are able to recognise the symptoms of eating disorders and are aware of how to signpost to the appropriate treatments. Trainee clinical psychologists are likely to come into contact with people suffering from an eating disorder, and it is important that they are trained to recognise the signs and symptoms, treat if appropriate, or signpost to an eating disorder service. The British Psychological Society’s Faculty for Eating Disorders (FED) provide guidelines on ensuring trainees receive appropriate learning opportunities to work with people with eating disorders.

 Aims

This project aimed to gather information on the current eating disorder training provided on doctoral training programmes in clinical psychology in the UK. It also aimed to provide data on the eating disorder teaching provision and eating disorder placement and research opportunities available to trainees. This information will be of interest when the pending updated FED teaching guidelines are published later this year.

Methods

This project was an evaluation. Participants included representatives from UK clinical psychology doctoral programmes. Participants completed an online survey answering questions on their course’s eating disorder teaching, placement and research opportunities. The survey involved both quantitative and qualitative items and was analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis.

Results

Ten respondents (N = 10) out of the 31 courses contacted took part in the survey (a response rate of 32%).

Teaching Provision

·      100% of course respondents reported providing specific eating disorder teaching delivered by an eating disorder specialist psychologist.

·      Courses reported offering specialist teaching in Year 1 and Year 3.

·      One course reported providing 0-4 hours of eating disorder specific teaching, seven courses reported providing 5-8 hours of this teaching, and two courses reported providing 12+ hours of this teaching.

·      Some courses reported not having a modular structure to their course, however those that do stated that eating disorder teaching took place across a variety of modules. These modules included those focused on young people and families, adult mental health, evidence-based practice, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, and Systemic Therapy.

·      One course reported having a specific eating disorder teaching ‘strand’ in their course structure.

Eating disorder Placement Provision

·      100% of course respondents offer placement to trainees in eating disorder services. These were offered across years 1-3.

Eating Disorder Research Provision

·      44% of course respondents reported employing eating disorder specialist staff who can supervise doctoral research projects in the area of eating disorders.

·      100% of course respondents reported having other staff members and links with external psychologists who have the potential to supervise doctoral research projects in the area of eating disorders.

·      Of the 10 institutions who responded, 87.5% have a trainee completing their doctoral research in the area of eating disorders, and 55.5% have a trainee completing a service-related project in this area.  

Approach to eating disorder teaching, placement and research provision

One course mentioned the need to cover eating disorder teaching in first year as first years are likely to work with clients where the main presenting problem is not an eating disorder, but unhealthy eating habits are present. Another course mentioned the need to integrate learning on the separate teaching sessions on children with eating disorders and the adult with eating disorders. One course noted the opportunity for their trainees to meet certain learning objectives in their final year if they wish to pursue a career in eating disorders.

Conclusions and recommendations

The results of this study provide data on the current standards of the provision of eating disorder learning opportunities which will be of interest when the BPS FED release their guidelines on teaching later this year. It would be beneficial to re-run this project when the pending guidelines have been released and for more course directors to complete the survey, so the data is more representable of UK courses. It would be interesting to then compare these results against the published guidance and see whether any consistent discrepancies across courses exist. This would enable further development and dissemination of good practice in relation to eating disorder training provision.