King's College London

Eating Disorders: Delineating illness and recovery trajectories to inform personalised prevention and early intervention in young people (EDIFY)

EDIFY is a four-year programme of research focused on how we understand and treat eating disorders in young people. It includes six core projects or ‘workstreams’, each approaching the topic of early intervention for eating disorders from a different perspective. The workstreams span projects in the arts and humanities right through to state-of-the-art scientific research in informatics and neuroscience.

This interdisciplinary approach will allow us to build a rich picture of the different reasons why young people develop eating disorders, how these illnesses progress, and what we can do to promote lasting recovery.

EDIFY is led by Professor Ulrike Schmidt, King’s College London and Dr Helen Sharpe, University of Edinburgh, alongside other academic and third sector partners across the UK. The project has young people’s voices at its heart, with an advisory board of young people affected by eating disorders helping to steer and shape the whole research process. It is one of seven projects funded by UK Research and Innovation as part of their 'Adolescent Mental Health and the Developing Mind' scheme.