In 2020, I decided to get help for an eating disorder.
Up until that point, I’d had some variation of one for years. It all started when I decided to go on my first diet, aged 21. What followed was a half decade of cycling through maddening patterns of restriction. From bingeing to purging, starving to hardcore exercising, my mind was constantly overrun by thoughts of food. How much I was eating, how much I wasn’t eating, how great of a person I was for resisting food, how much of a loser I was for not being able to control myself. My self-esteem went down the toilet, along with my ability to feel joy.
By the time I was ready to seek treatment, none was available. Despite having the time and financial means to see a therapist, I couldn’t get into one. Waitlists were months long. Inpatient treatment wasn’t an option either – by that stage, my eating disorder wasn’t considered “severe” enough to warrant a stay. And even if it had been, I had rent to pay and a career to build. Pressing pause on all that wasn’t feasible.
That’s when a psychologist – who didn’t have space for me herself – reached out. She sent me a link to a study being run by the University of Sydney and the InsideOut Institute. They were testing an online therapy program for bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. She said I’d be a good candidate.
I had no idea what to expect. And whatever expectations I had were low. I wasn’t convinced that an online program could make a dent in what I felt was, at that stage, a personality flaw. But I had nothing to lose. So I signed up.
It was a 12-week program. Every day, I logged my meals, my thoughts and any compensatory behaviours. While that might sound like a lot, I was already constantly thinking about food and my body. Now, I was just putting it down somewhere other than my brain. At first, tracking seemed counterintuitive. Counting meals was something I did when I was deep in restriction mode. But the point was separation. I wasn’t the food I did or didn’t eat. My behaviour was just that: behaviour. Something that could be unlearned. Meanwhile, I had weekly check-ins with a counsellor. She was kind of like the site manager for my emotional excavation. I was slowly dismantling the scaffolding I’d built around myself, and she helped me name each bit as it fell away.
The program changed my life. It kickstarted my recovery and set me on the path back to my child self – the girl who didn’t obsess over what she ate. The girl who thought of food as just that. Food. Something to enjoy, to share with friends, to enrich life – not interrupt it.
Last week the federal government announced it is rolling this program out to the general public. After 10 years of research, the InsideOut eClinic is now available to Australians aged 16 and over who are struggling with food or body image concerns. It’s a free, online clinic that anyone can access at any time. You don’t need a diagnosis. You don’t need a referral. You can just go to the website and have a poke around. The eClinic includes tailored programs like BEeT (for binge eating and bulimia), SkillED (for broader symptoms) and SupportED (for carers). There’s a health professional hub for clinicians.
When I was unwell, I had absolutely no idea where to start looking for help. This eClinic is a much-needed safety net. You can complete the programs at your own pace, from wherever you are. It’s not suitable for people in a medical emergency or psychological crisis – they’ll still need face-to-face care – but for many people, this will be a lifeline.
Research has already shown how effective online therapy through the eClinic can be. And it’s a gamechanger for people who live regionally or can’t afford private treatment.
Eating disorder research in this country is sorely lacking and deeply underfunded. It’s a dire reality, considering eating disorders have one of the highest mortality rates of any mental illness in Australia. More than a million Australians are now living with one. In 2023 alone, more than 1,200 people died from an eating disorder, according to the Butterfly Foundation.
Hundreds of thousands are still stuck in silence, still waiting, still falling through the cracks. The fact that the government has seen the merit in this treatment is significant. It’s time we moved the dial.
Lucinda Price is an author and comedian known online as Froomes. She is an InsideOut Institute eClinic ambassador
In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD’s eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope
