Ms Harriet Parsons:

Social media was mentioned. One of the things that happened during Covid was that we were all locked down and we did not have anyone to bounce off so that we would know what everybody else was doing. Everybody was presenting their best selves online on their social media. At the same time as that, all the normal routines fell away so people started to instate boundaries and routines and that, coupled with the questions about what everyone else was doing, made people feel they should be doing the same things they saw online. That was the perfect environment for an eating disorder. You had people who might have had a vulnerability towards being anxious, perfectionist and high-achieving and suddenly there were no standards to which they could measure themselves so of course they measured themselves against the highest possible standards. This meant they started running marathons around their estates and saying they could only eat during such and such times. We saw that loads of people tipped into an eating disorder. All those things together brought about a perfect storm.