UK's first diabetes and eating disorder service

The UK’s first ever diabetes and eating disorder service, led by King’s College London’s Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine – Khalida Ismail – is the subject of a new documentary on BBC One tonight.

The programme follows patients with ‘diabulimia’ – a term used to describe people with type 1 diabetes who have a strong fear that injecting the insulin they need to control their diabetes will lead to weight gain. They deliberately reduce or stop injecting insulin in order to lose weight, risking potentially life-threatening complications in the process.

There is very little data on how many people are affected by diabulimia, but it is estimated that around a third of young women with type 1 diabetes give themselves less insulin in order to lose weight.

Based in King’s College Hospital, Professor Ismail’s clinic integrates diabetes and mental health experts to offer help with both the medical management of type 1 diabetes and psychiatric aspects of disordered eating and living with type 1 diabetes.

 

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Khalida Ismail said: ‘What is difficult is that a lot of diabetes teams may not necessarily have the expertise or the skill-set to carry out the assessments and know how to ask patients about this problem. And even when they do, the services may not exist and neither does the research evidence as to how best to support these people.’

The Diabetes, Psychiatry and Psychology Research Group at King’s College London is aiming to address this evidence gap and  recently published the first review  of currently available treatments for diabulimia in the journal Diabetic Medicine. It concluded that this complex patient group requires an intensive intervention which focuses on both disordered eating and diabetes management.

Find out more  about the Diabetes, Psychiatry and Psychology Group at King’s and the Diabetes and Psychiatry clinical service at King’s College Hospital.