The new season of The Crown is back with a bang! COSRT’s Jo Coker discusses their portrayal of Diana and her battle with bulimia and how it can impact on relationships.
The new Netflix series the “Crown” has been met with some degree of controversy from the royal family and public alike. The royal family say the events are not real and did not take place, and the public ask questions like – Do the royal family really play that daft game? Was Princess Margaret really so grandiose and rude? But maybe what has captured most of our attention is Diana, her heart-rending distress and the graphic visual portrayal of her eating disorder, bulimia.
Eating disorders are often silent, stigmatised, and hidden for the sufferer and those who surround them. There is a shame in admitting to one for the sufferer and often ignoring of the disorder from family and friends, especially if the person “appears” normal weight. Though men suffer from eating disorders their plight often goes undetected, as was demonstrated by the illuminating and excellent BBC documentary “Living with Bulimia” about cricketer Freddie Flintoff’s long struggle with the disease.
Eating disorders including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and other specified feeding or eating disorders (OSFED), are responsible for more loss of life than any other individual mental health condition, especially if co-morbid with another psychiatric disorder and this increases with age. It is estimated that between 1.25 and 3 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder with around 25% being male. Most develop during adolescence the most common age range being 16-40 years old, though increasingly cases are seen in younger and older age groups. Research suggests that individuals who have family members with eating disorders are more likely to develop disorder themselves.
An eating disorder is a form of communication, wordless and hard to interpret, usually aimed at someone in the household. It is an indication of distress that needs to be put into words so that it can then be discussed, processed, and worked on to facilitate alternative strategies and a more positive outcome. This process is made difficult because even if the target can be identified, the disordered eater rarely knows what the distress is about because the disorder is at an unconscious level and it is therefore hard to verbalise and reason.
The impact of the disorder on family and intimate relationships, is huge and we will doubtless see this played out by the Netflix’s “Crown” with Diana and Charles’s deteriorating relationship being centre stage. For therapists working with couple and intimate relationships it is therefore vital that they have a working understanding of these conditions as they are so common and cause such damage and distress if not identified and treated. Therapists must not, like much of society, ignore them and think it is not part of their work.
For therapists, the therapeutic task is to make conscious the purpose of the disordered eating and enable the management of the disorder within the couple or family by other and less destructive and more positive means.
COSRT is delighted to announce that Professor Julia Buckroyd will be hosting a Live Seminar via zoom on Saturday 6th February on ‘Disorded Eating in Families and Relationships. Book here.