First Memorial Service Held for Victims of Eating Disorders

Charity organization Beat is working hard on raising awareness on eating disorders, in a bid to help parents and teens affected by them see they are not alone in their struggle. The first memorial service ever for victims of eating disorders has been announced.

The decision to hold the event comes after parents of a 16-year-old girl, also from the UK, have gone public with the story of how their daughter died from anorexia in a little over a year.

According to Sky News, over 1.6 million people in the UK have an eating disorder, more of them being women aged 12-25. One in five will die if untreated.

Here Beat steps in, with the recently announced event, which – obviously – aims at not letting people forget that, before anything, eating disorders do kill and at offering them proper support.

“The event has been organized by the charity Beat and it will also be a celebration of the work done by professionals to help those with disorders including anorexia or bulimia,” Sky News says.

“The public service is being held in Southwark Cathedral in London and over 100 bereaved family members are expected to attend,” notes the same media outlet.

“The service will be led by Canon Ian Ainsworth-Smith, who is a psychotherapist with experience of working with victims of eating disorders,” the same publication informs.

As noted above, the decision to hold such an event stems from the declarations the parents of Anna Wood made to the press about the death of their 16-year-old daughter.

The Daily Mail reports that the girl initially embarked on a post-Christmas diet but was then sucked in into a cycle of dieting, starvation and working out till exhaustion that she couldn’t break.

Aged just 16, she was eventually rushed to the hospital with a perforated ulcer – but she had so little body fat she could no longer warm herself and doctors realized she wouldn’t survive surgery.

In almost no time, all her major organs began to shut down and Anna died.

“Until Anna was admitted to hospital we had no idea how bad it was. I just wish there was more help out there for parents trying to deal with a child with the disease. We just felt so helpless,” the teen’s father says for the Mail.

Now, hopefully, other parents in the UK will have more help when dealing with similar situations.