Harrogate & District NAS Autism and Eating Disorders Conference 2018
Last month, members of the SEDAF team (Will Mandy, Janina Brede and Charli Babb) attended and spoke at the Autism and Eating Disorders conference in Harrogate, hosted by the local NAS branch. The conference was well attended with over 300 delegates, including practitioners working in eating disorder and autism settings, autistic individuals, relatives, and researchers from across the UK. There were a range of speakers, with topics covering personal experiences from two autistic speakers, ARFID and anorexia nervosa and clinical experiences of autism and eating disorders.
Will spoke about the recognition and support of autistic girls and women on the spectrum, and discussed the under-diagnosis of women due to a potential female autism phenotype, whereby girls and women present with subtly different autistic traits to the more widely recognised characteristics of autism, leading them to be missed or misdiagnosed in healthcare services.
This lead nicely onto Janina and Charli's talk which outlined the initial findings of SEDAF's first qualitative study. The talk focused on findings from the interviews with autistic women as the analysis for the other participant groups is still ongoing. Charli and Janina spoke about the main themes deriving from the data, covering the autistic women's experiences of eating disorder services and potential causing and maintaining factors of the eating disorder. They also presented a preliminary model of restrictive eating disorders in autism which was developed from the themes described.
The talks were followed by a panel discussion, where the SEDAF team members were joined by the earlier speakers. A lot of interesting conversations came about as a result of the panel and it was great to hear different perspectives on the matters discussed.
Many thanks to the Harrogate NAS branch for giving us the opportunity to share our research and for organising such a successful event!
Will spoke about the recognition and support of autistic girls and women on the spectrum, and discussed the under-diagnosis of women due to a potential female autism phenotype, whereby girls and women present with subtly different autistic traits to the more widely recognised characteristics of autism, leading them to be missed or misdiagnosed in healthcare services.
This lead nicely onto Janina and Charli's talk which outlined the initial findings of SEDAF's first qualitative study. The talk focused on findings from the interviews with autistic women as the analysis for the other participant groups is still ongoing. Charli and Janina spoke about the main themes deriving from the data, covering the autistic women's experiences of eating disorder services and potential causing and maintaining factors of the eating disorder. They also presented a preliminary model of restrictive eating disorders in autism which was developed from the themes described.
The talks were followed by a panel discussion, where the SEDAF team members were joined by the earlier speakers. A lot of interesting conversations came about as a result of the panel and it was great to hear different perspectives on the matters discussed.
Many thanks to the Harrogate NAS branch for giving us the opportunity to share our research and for organising such a successful event!
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