Meridian East

SAM'S SITE HELPS OTHERS

Our Fixer's website is set to help many men with eating disorders

Eating Disorders Awareness Week takes place this month (23rd to 28th February). Eating disorders are a serious mental illness affecting 1.1 million people in Britain.  One man who knows that all too well is ITV Fixer Sam Thomas, whose project was to launch a ground-breaking website Men Get Eating Disorders Too.

22 year old Sam, from Brighton, battled with bulimia for 8 years. Frustrated with the perception that it is a largely female issue and the lack of services for men, he decided to set up a site to offer help and support for men affected by anorexia, bulimia and other food-related disorders.

‘Men Get Eating Disorders Too’ (www.mengetedstoo.co.uk) was launched last November. Here, Sam tells us what’s happened since.

“In the space of six months, the project has come from being an idea to an almost established project that aims to raise awareness of eating disorders among men so that men can seek support. Here I explain how the project has come about, with all the various developments and achievements so far.

How I came to set up the site…

For some time, I had this idea to set up a website for men who had been affected by eating disorders to provide them with the information and advice and links to support. This was something quite personal to me, as I had suffered from bulimia for eight years and hadn’t come across any similar sites or services specific to the needs of men. Therefore, I knew that this was something I had to do -  to help the many thousands of men out there who were carrying out there eating disorders in secret due to the lack of service provision.

Not only that, I was aware there wasn’t a lot of coverage of the issue. There were occasional articles in the press but not that often and was usually focused on certain aspects of eating disorders (e.g. bigorexia – not necessarily anorexia or bulimia, etc). This was something I felt as though had to change in order to help make men more aware of their eating habits and recognise the symptoms in themselves, so I wrote a letter to two national  magazines ‘New’ and ‘Gay Times’ and told my story to get this coverage.

I got quite a bit of feedback from the articles, including a couple of emails from other sufferers. This re-affirmed my idea to set up the site so I decided this was exactly what I should do. I had no idea how to create a website, let alone run one and my knowledge on eating disorders was only reasonable, though I realised these were things I could learn and/or get people to help me with.

I put in a couple of funding bids to organisations that seemed appropriate. There was quite a long process to hear the outcome of the bids, so in the meantime, I began researching and getting the foundations for the project in place. I made some posters to get some volunteers involved and began writing some content for the site. In this time, someone told me about ITV Fixers from a project I was volunteering with. On a whim, I sent an email to Fixers outlining my idea and soon got a response. Two weeks later. I met ITV Fixers Young Persons Co-ordinator Ree to discuss the ways in which Fixers could help me.

Getting involved with ITV Fixers…

Unfortunately, the funding bids I applied for were rejected from both funders but for separate reasons – one fund was oversubscribed and the other didn’t quite fit in with the criteria. This was quite a sad moment as it had taken almost six months to find out the outcome of these bids and I had thought this project would have been suitable (clearly not). However, hope was not lost as this meant I could be supported by ITV Fixers to get the project set up and off the ground. In fact, looking back, this was probably for the best!

Ree arranged  for me to meet some web designers and helped me to recruit volunteers to assist me to research and write content, gather personal stories for the site and generally support it by offering ideas. Having other people on board  was quite important for various reasons but mainly because I felt as though I needed other people to bounce ideas off.

Before long, the website was coming together and quite a few people got in contact with me wanting to help. Finally, it was all becoming a reality!

Making a broadcast with ITV Fixers…

I was asked by ITV Fixers whether I would like to make a broadcast item for ITV Meridian Tonight in the South East about my website. I said yes immediately as I thought back to the lack of coverage in the media that prompted me to set up the site in the first place. This would be an ideal way of making many more people aware of the issue as well as informing them about the project.

I had a meeting with ITV Fixers producer Sarah in a Brighton coffee shop one afternoon where we came up with a whole load of ideas of what the film could include. One idea was to interview a celebrity about an eating disorder (e.g. John Prescott or Peter Andre). However, without much success on that front, Sarah thought of a better idea – why didn’t I interview my dad about his perspective of having a son who had an eating disorder? At first, I deliberated on whether this was a good idea or not, especially as I had never spoken about my eating problems with my dad in detail before. Nor did I know what his point of view on it was or what he might have gone through at that time, so I suppose that became even more of a reason to hear his side to get ‘both sides of the story’ as it were.

On the day of the filming, we started with the interview with my dad. My step-nan had kindly allowed us to film in her conservatory, to make it look as homely as possible. It was quite strange talking to my dad in this way in front of the cameras! Though it was interesting to hear what he had to say and was quite surprised how much he knew about my disorder, despite my past efforts to keep it a secret!

The filming also included me talking with Eating Disorder Counsellor Lorna Marchant and doing some development work with the web designers. Over all, the filming was smooth-running and problem-free. The day was quite long but somehow went quite quickly and was a tad exhausting. That night, I slept like a log!

The broadcast was shown early December and I got several emails from people that had been affected by eating disorders, including one from a girl who had realised she had an eating disorder after watching the report.

Here is her email:
“I have had bulimia for 6 years. After seeing you on the news I have only just accepted the fact the I have this eating disorder. I know your site is aimed for men but you are the reason why I have accepted I have a problem. I can't tell you enough how amazing you are, and what an inspiration you are to me, and you must be to thousands of other people. No one understands why I do it and they say "ahh just stop it, you’re damaging your body." It’s all well and good for them to say, but they have no idea!! One little thing can trigger it and I’m back to square 1. When I saw you on the news you said everything spot on to how I am feeling. I have never been able to explain, but you have it word for word and it has made people around me understand more, you are amazing and a very strong person I wish I could be like you. I just wanted you to know how much you have made an impact on me. I don’t know what else to say really.  Thank you and good luck with the website. I’m sure it will be amazing.”

I had two responses from men who are affected by eating disorders – one in Scotland whose mum saw the film and sent him a link to it. He was incredibly supportive of the site and has now contributed his story.

The other was a young lad who was only beginning to get help for his illness.

The broadcast was definitely a success and many people have given positive feedback and generated interest for the website after watching it.

See the broadcast on the player below...

Creating the website…

While waiting to hear back about funding, I started writing and gathering much of the content for the site. This included facts about eating disorders and men, definitions of eating disorders, signs and symptoms, getting support, treatments, recovery, personal stories and inspirational articles – all of which became the various sections of the site. Most of this was written by me, with some articles and personal stories from the volunteers.

Ree put me in contact with two guys studying web design at the University of Brighton who put together the initial designs for the layout of the website.

In terms of the logo and branding, Karen at ITV Fixers made up some draft logos based on some of my own ideas. This was quite a difficult process to narrow down to the final logo as a) they were all good and b) I am incredibly indecisive. So I asked the volunteers to vote for the logo, which resulted in the final logo.

While the web design is being finalised, Karen (ITV Fixers, Creative Resources) uploaded a version of the site with all the written content and the ITV Fixers film. This also includes a video of me interviewing Lorna Marchant, the Eating Disorder Counsellor.

The website is not far off complete and should be ready for launch around the time of Eating Disorders Week (23-27 Feb). If not, I will be promoting the site as an upcoming website and will do further publicity in the coming months.

Campaigning…

Having met with a few men with eating disorders while setting up the site, I realised that services needed to be more inclusive of men’s needs in relation to eating disorders. Currently, this is a huge problem for men as many doctors can be unaware of this issue, meaning that they don’t get sufficient or appropriate help. Due to this lack of awareness many men report that getting a diagnosis for their eating disorder is a struggle and their symptoms dismissed probably because eating disorders are commonly seen as a female issue.

I want to try and help encourage better service provision and challenge such gender discrimination by setting up a petition on the 10 Downing Street website.

The petition reads:  “We, the undersigned, petition the Prime Minister to ensure men with eating disorders are given the same opportunities for treatment and care as female sufferers and are by no means discriminated against by their doctor/other health practitioners because they are male.”
I hope this will bring this issue to the government’s attention and prompt them to review services so that they are more inclusive to men’s needs.

I need as many people to sign this petition as possible. My target is to have at least 250 signatures by 9th January 2010.

Link to the petition: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/men-eds/

The next steps…

Besides completing the site and launching it, I have got quite a long list of things to do to develop the project and further the campaign.
This includes holding a fundraiser event, which will be a sponsored walk probably from Seaford to Brighton. Several of the volunteers/supporters have expressed interest in taking part so hopefully quite a few people will be involved in this. The idea for the walk is to raise some funds to sustain the website but to also raise the profile as well as bring all those who are involved together.

I am also thinking about holding an event at some stage to showcase the website to the various national and local service providers.
Longer term plans include looking and applying for funding so the project can grow and help men in other ways, possibly by providing support by holding events/conferences for men with eating disorders and/or providing training to service providers/professionals so they can be more inclusive of men’s needs.

In the meantime, I will be focusing on promoting the website and raising awareness of the issue. I am currently looking at applying for small pots of money to create a poster about the website and a flyer/leaflet.

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