Ten ways we are shaping a better future for young people with eating disorders – insights from the EDIFY Conference

In January 2026, the EDIFY Conference at King’s College London brought together researchers, clinicians, lived experience experts and artists to share insights from four years of cross-disciplinary research on young people’s mental health.

Here are ten key takeaways on how EDIFY and youth mental health research are shaping a better future for young people with eating disorders.

1 – Moving eating disorders research into a wider youth mental health context

In her introduction Professor Ulrike Schmidt, EDIFY-Investigator, welcomed the ~ 150 attendees.

She highlighted the unique nature of EDIFY, i.e. its cutting-edge science, its inter-disciplinarity, and its focus on youth voice and under-served groups. She emphasised that eating disorders do not occur in a vacuum and should not be siloed. Accordingly, there was a dual focus to the day – to celebrate EDIFY’s ground breaking scientific work and how this will help shape a better future for young people, while also considering the work in a broader context. With that in mind, leaders from other areas of youth mental health had been invited to share their work, inspire, inform and allow connections to emerge.

2 – The need for multi-modal and transdiagnostic research

EDIFY investigator, Professor Sylvane Desrivières, presented insights from work by her group involving integrated longitudinal population-based and clinical cohorts (IMAGEN, ESTRA, STRATIFY). These studies use genetic/epigenetic, neuroimaging, neurocognitive and behavioural data to explore how biopsychosocial factors affect the risk and course of eating disorders course.

The studies report that eating disorders emerge from shared developmental risk with other psychiatric disorders. They indicate that young people with different patterns of disordered eating (restrictive and/or emotional or uncontrolled) show different alterations in brain maturation patterns, and that genetic factors and certain psychological traits mediate these brain-behaviour links. Furthermore, in young people recovered from anorexia or bulimia nervosa, there are brain–behaviour relationships linked to recovery. Together, this work provides important pointers towards novel brain- and trait-focused targets for prevention and early intervention.

3 – Links between eating disorders and social disadvantage: the case for food insecurity

EDIFY researcher, Callum Bryson, presented studies which stressed the importance of the broader social and economic context in which eating disorders arise and present, such as the cost-of-living crisis and the impact of food insecurity.

He shared results of a survey on UK-based eating disorder healthcare professionals, who reported food insecurity as a growing issue for their patients. A parallel survey on people with lived experience of an eating disorder provided rich qualitative data which highlighted how food insecurity, for some, was a precursor to developing their eating disorder, and for others led their symptoms to worsen or restart. Work led by EDIFY researcher Dr Nora Trompeter, using the ALSPAC cohort showed that temporary or persistent childhood experiences of food insecurity nearly doubled the risk of binge eating or purging behaviours in adolescence, demonstrating that even temporary food insecurity has negative longer term effects.

4 – The impact of visual social media on eating disorders

EDIFY investigator Professor Heike Bartel, University of Nottingham, presented her team’s collaborative interdisciplinary research, bringing together arts and humanities approaches, particularly linguistic analysis, to explore how young people with lived experience of eating disorders describe and make sense of eating disorder content on TikTok.

Across qualitative interviews, three recurring patterns emerged: “View One, See More,” where a single video triggers a stream of similar content; “Morbid Curiosity,” the strong pull towards material perceived as harmful; and “From Helpful to Unhelpful,” where recovery-oriented posts are followed by triggering content. One participant captured this experience through the metaphor of “falling down the rabbit hole”, referencing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Like Alice’s descent, scrolling begins with curiosity but becomes increasingly disorienting, difficult to control and shaped by opaque rules, reflecting how algorithm-driven feeds can blur agency and intensify vulnerability.

The talk initiated an important and highly topical discussion on responsible digital practices and empowering recovery on social media.

5 – Learning from other areas of youth mental health

Four keynotes provided a broader context for EDIFY research and early intervention in eating disorders. Professor Matthew Broome, University of Birmingham, drew a broad arc across youth mental health. He highlighted learnings from 30 years of research into early intervention for psychosis, i.e. using both research evidence and patient/carer advocacy to advance this. He reflected on his experiences on the pan-European YouthReach study, a project that aims to provide evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, safety and scalability of walk-in mental health centres, guided self-help apps and online platforms for young people aged 12–25. He moved on to work on reducing school-based bullying, as a transdiagnostic risk factor to prevent mental health problems. He reflected on recent rises in youth mental health problems and the wider societal and global contexts in which this has occurred. Finally, he presented some of his work on increasing young people’s agency in effecting change in mental health clinical encounters and more broadly in these challenging times.

Two further keynotes shifted focus towards exploring the challenges and opportunities of delivering mental health interventions in real-world settings, including schools and universities. Professors Essie Viding and Pasco Fearon, from University College London, presented initial findings of the RE-SET project, a school-based prevention programme, showing how a socio-emotional intervention aiming to improve children’s inter-personal and emotion-regulation skills can support young people at-risk. Professor Ed Watkins, University of Exeter, presented findings from Nurture-U, a programme aiming to improve the mental health of university students. A survey of over 14,000 University students showed that those from minoritised communities and those with prior mental health problems were most likely to experience poorer mental health at University. He introduced a stepped care whole University ‘compassionate campus’ approach to supporting students’ mental health, for example by increasing mental health literacy and introducing an app-based intervention to reduce worry and rumination. He highlighted the importance of integrating research, prevention and culture change to support young people’s mental health in universities.

Finally, Dr Jessica Schleider, from Northwestern University, Chicago, started from the premise that the vast majority of young people with eating disorders or other mental health disorders do not receive any form of intervention. Most available supports and interventions are retroactive and do not support early help-seeking and intervention. This set the scene for her sharing her ground-breaking work on mechanisms, effectiveness and scalability of single-session interventions in wider youth mental interventions and in the context of eating disorders prevention and early intervention specifically.

6 – Recognising that intervention timing matters

Eating disorders change over time – people can move through different stages, and various individual factors may lead to symptoms easing or worsening over the course of the illness. The STORY study seeks to understand precisely when and why these changes occur.

STORY follows over 800 young people across the UK at different points in their illness for one year, using smartphones and wearable smart rings to understand everyday patterns like sleep, activity and stress levels and their links to recovery trajectories. The joint presentation by EDIFY researchers Callum Bryson, Carina Kuehne and Rosie Tatham shared a major milestone: recruitment has been successfully completed and the focus is now shifting to exploring this unique and rich dataset. Early findings suggest that changes in daily patterns e.g. of sleep and activity, can sometimes appear before eating disorder symptoms worsen, opening the door to future support that arrives just in the moment, when it is needed most.

7 – Identifying novel digital markers of health: the case for Voice and Language

Speech, voice and language are multi-faceted indicators of physical and mental health. STORY includes repeated collection of language and voice measures to identify novel biomarkers for eating disorders. Participants are asked to read aloud a short, standard paragraph, followed by talking freely about their plans for the following week. From these recordings, researchers then analyse linguistic features such as word count, first-person pronoun use, and emotional tone, alongside vocal features including speech rate, pausing, and pitch.

EDIFY investigator Dr Nicholas Cummins, presented early analyses based on over 4,000 speech files from more than 500 STORY participants. These suggest meaningful differences between individuals with eating disorders and healthy controls, showing that eating disorder participants speak more slowly, with longer and more frequent pauses, and use a more negative emotional tone compared to controls. These effects dwindle when depression is controlled for and are more pronounced in people with more severe eating disorder symptoms. As the study progresses, a larger sample will help clarify these patterns and deepen our understanding of how speech is influenced by different symptoms and co-occurring conditions.

8 – Intervening at a brain-based level

The RaISE trial sets out to expand treatment options for young people with persistent anorexia nervosa by using a novel brain focused approach to treatment, that is based on neural models of the illness.

Carla Dirmina, EDIFY researcher, presented preliminary data from RaISE. This is a randomised controlled trial investigating the use of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS), a type of non-invasive brain stimulation based on magnetic pulses, as a potential treatment option for young people with anorexia nervosa with previous unsuccessful treatments. Participants are given 20 sessions of either real or placebo iTBS across 4 weeks, taking only 15 minutes each. Assessments before and after treatment cover a comprehensive range of measures, including those that shed light on mechanisms of action of iTBS in anorexia. They also include young people’s views on the acceptability of iTBS. Provisional findings suggest that there are notable differences between the study arms in mood and eating disorder symptoms after treatment and that young people had positive views on this treatment.

9 – Incorporating artistic expressions to produce a new narrative on eating disorders

During the conference, the “Stories in Shape & Sound” art exhibition brought research on eating disorders into a shared, creative space. Developed through the EDIFY Artists-in-Residence programme, the exhibition presented works by Zofia Chamienia, Maeve Magnolia Gillespie, Sian Fan and Ivana Picek, created in close collaboration with EDIFY researchers, clinicians, and people with lived experience.

Working across sound, illustration, textiles and digital sculpture, the four artists engaged with EDIFY’s research themes: lived experience, diversity, resilience, recovery, prevention and early intervention.

From Zofia’s hopeful visual map of future care shaped by young people’s voices to Sian’s playful, multisensory re-imagining of our relationship with digital health technologies, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on recovery, connection and inclusion. Maeve’s evolving textile installation, stitched together by over one hundred contributors, offers a powerful collective reflection on resilience and care, while Ivana’s music traces the emotional complexity of treatment and renewal.

Together, Stories in Shape & Sound demonstrates how creative practice can open new and inclusive ways of understanding eating disorders, and how research and personal stories can be transformed into accessible and emotionally resonant art pieces.

10 – Bringing EDIFY research into practice and making early intervention bigger, bolder and better

EDIFY-investigators Professor Ulrike Schmidt and Dr Karina Allen concluded the day by reflecting on EDIFY’s contributions towards shaping a better future for young people with eating disorders. Key elements of this are that EDIFY has amplified the voices of young people, particularly those from under-served groups.

EDIFY has also initiated a paradigm shift in early intervention for eating disorders, via creating new insights from brain research, big-data from smart-technology, and new biological measures. All of this will create a step-change in how prevention, early-intervention and personalised care for eating disorders is designed and delivered in real life.

An important next step is the development of SPEEDY, a “Strategy for Action on Early Intervention Practice and Research in Eating Disorders”, an initiative in progress to helping ensure that all young people get the right support at the right time. This ambitious action plan aims to integrate and build on the findings from the different strands of the EDIFY programme, to help us turn what we know works into practical and accessible care and to further advance knowledge and research in this area.

If you'd like to learn more, please visit the EDIFY website: www.EDIFYresearch.co.uk