Last year she became an inpatient in the hospital for six weeks after she decided, in consultation with her family, that her best chance at recovery was as an inpatient, rather than staying as an outpatient, which she had been for two to three months. <\/p>\n
She believes she developed an eating disorder at about 21, when she first started denying herself food and began pounding the country roads around her house to burn off as many calories as she could, and quieten the noise in her head. <\/p>\n
People knew but they mostly didn\u2019t say anything, with a few exceptions. One time, seven years ago, a consultant tapped her shoulder at work where she was nursing and asked her bluntly if she had an eating disorder. Another time, a friend asked her if she would die by suicide because of her struggle with anorexia. For 10 years, she speed-walked up to 20 miles a day, rising in secret two hours earlier than everyone else while it was still dark outside. <\/p>\n
She lied constantly, saying she had eaten when she hadn\u2019t. She was so hungry that often it was hard to think properly. She had no peace of mind. She couldn\u2019t stop moving, even to read a book or watch TV, because her brain would tug at her, telling her she wasn\u2019t burning enough calories. \u201cI never sat,\u201d she says, but she was exhausted.<\/p>\n
Mary knows she is not what people imagine when they think of an anorexia patient because of her age: 61. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel appropriate,\u201d she says. \u201cAge is a big barrier for treatment. There\u2019s a lack of understanding. They think, \u2018Oh, she\u2019s vain\u2019. I tried to get help. I was 10 years trying.\u201d When she confided in doctors at regular intervals at the clinic she was attending for anxiety, she says they didn\u2019t listen properly. \u201cThe staff were on rotation and they just brushed it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Life is different when you\u2019re in your 50s and 60s. There can be lots of risk factors that accumulate at this time of life\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Harriet Parsons, Bodywhys<\/p>\n
More than 500 people in Ireland were diagnosed with an eating disorder in 2024, an increase of more than 100 cases from 2023. <\/p>\n
That same year, one in four calls taken by Bodywhys, the voluntary organisation supporting people affected by eating disorders, concerned people over the age of 36, according to their 2024 annual report. <\/p>\n
But the stories told in the media about eating disorders largely reflect young people\u2019s experiences. Anorexia in middle age and beyond is less documented and less visible, with fewer support structures in place. There are just three public inpatient eating disorder beds for adults who are acutely unwell, in St Vincent\u2019s hospital in Dublin. <\/p>\n
Yet eating disorders are often recurrent by nature. As a person ages, experiences such as the menopause or grief stemming from bereavement can be trigger points for an eating disorder, perhaps in abeyance, to strike again with more force. The prospect of retirement, bringing with it a change of routine, can be a factor. \u201cBecause I was coming up to retirement, I knew I would exercise more, if I had more time,\u201d Mary says. \u201cI knew I would be found dead somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary grew up in the countryside, one of a large family. Her late father, she says, was \u201cprobably an alcoholic\u201d. \u201cWhen he was drinking I was petrified, and when he was on the dry I was more petrified.\u201d Her mother favoured her three sons over her daughters. \u201cI had a love-hate relationship with her. I did anything I could for her, but I resented her. She didn\u2019t stand up for us. She was callous.\u201d<\/p>\n
She married young, and Mary\u2019s husband knew about her restrictive eating habits, but at that time, Mary says, the eating disorder was \u201cthere, but quiet\u201d. She had two healthy pregnancies and a hands-on career as a nurse. But when her mother became sick and died 11 years ago, leaving her sons her entire estate in her will bar some jewellery to be divided among her daughters, Mary fell apart. \u201cI couldn\u2019t cope,\u201d she says. \u201cI lost it. It wasn\u2019t the money. I just couldn\u2019t understand how a mother could do that.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2018She eats late in the evening, as soon as we\u2019re gone to bed. In the utility room, rarely in front of us\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Sandra*<\/p>\n
Her eating disorder roared back into life. \u201cI had the insight about it,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I couldn\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harriet Parsons, a psychotherapist and chief executive of Bodywhys, says the dangers of an eating disorder regaining power as people age are significant. \u201cYour body is changing. Your role as a person in society is changing. Life is different when you\u2019re in your 50s and 60s. There can be lots of risk factors that accumulate at this time of life, where people turn to their body as a way of coping.\u201d<\/p>\n
When a person has an eating disorder for a long time, particularly anorexia, it can be \u201cincredibly difficult to shift their mindset\u201d, she says. \u201cFor everybody around them, on the one hand there can be a kind of getting used to it, and on the other, it can be so difficult. People oscillate between feeling frustrated and angry and hopeless.\u201d <\/p>\n
There can be a core reason for an eating disorder to begin, she says, an \u201cobjective trauma\u201d, which a person cannot walk away from unscathed. \u201cYou can think of trauma like this big hole or gap that shatters everything. How people recover is by trying to knit together the pieces again, using words to describe the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandra*, a retired business owner in her 80s, lives in Dublin with her husband and daughter Edith*. As a teenager, Edith, who is now in her 40s, was bubbly and outgoing. She loved sports, she was always on skates and she had lots of friends. Her parents worked in creative industries and the family enjoyed artistic pursuits. <\/p>\n
When Edith was 14, she left home one Friday evening to go and get chips nearby. She was a victim that night of what her mother calls \u201ca trauma\u201d. In the years afterwards, she started secretly self-harming and restricting her food intake, \u201cseeming normal on the surface, but far from it underneath\u201d. Her mother found out when Tallaght Hospital rang her out of the blue one day, after Edith had self-harmed in college and was rushed to the emergency department. \u201cIt all tumbled out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018She was punishing her body because deep down she had a wound she couldn\u2019t cope with\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Laura Beattie<\/p>\n
Edith now lives a solitary life at home with her parents. \u201cMostly her daytime is sleeping and her night-time is living,\u201d Sandra says. \u201cShe eats late in the evening, as soon as we\u2019re gone to bed. In the utility room, rarely in front of us. She doesn\u2019t go out: she\u2019s been out three times in the last year. Her friends don\u2019t call her any more, she\u2019s very isolated. The only place we go to is dental appointments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dental appointments are a result of the restrictions in her diet, which affected her teeth. \u201cAcidity destroyed her teeth,\u201d Sandra says. \u201cAnd the dentures they made, there\u2019s a marginal mistake, they didn\u2019t work.\u201d <\/p>\n
There are times when her daughter expresses a desire to recover, but the challenge can feel insurmountable. \u201cSuicidality drops into the scenario very frequently.\u201d Sometimes they have screaming matches, particularly when her daughter feels anxious or overwhelmed. <\/p>\n
Sandra doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen when she and her husband cannot care for Edith any more. When she goes to support groups, she meets \u201cterrified\u201d parents in their 40s with unwell children and realises these parents are the same age as her daughter. She thinks a lot about how hidden the disorder is among Edith\u2019s cohort. \u201cI think there are far more people who are living with anorexia than show up in the statistics. They\u2019ve given up trying to get help. They just live with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a woman in her 80s, her sister keeps telling her: \u201cThis is the wrong way around. You need care.\u201d Through attending support programmes offered by Bodywhys and reading the online blogs of authors including Julia Trehane and Tabitha Farrar, recovery coaches who specialise in eating disorder advice, Sandra has come to an understanding that perhaps she cannot help her daughter recover from anorexia \u2013 she can only assist her to live as well as possible with it, maintaining trust and hope between them. <\/p>\n
\u201cMeet them where they\u2019re at,\u201d she says. \u201cBe curious, not furious. If you manage to keep the thought that today I will try to recover \u2013 just that one seed \u2013 nurture that. Ask them: \u2018Did you manage to eat anything last night? Well done. Fantastic.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I have recovered a good bit, but I still have a long way to go\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Mary*<\/p>\n
Sometimes, though, she despairs. \u201cIn the end, have I done the right thing? Have I just kept her in a life of misery?\u201d<\/p>\n
What constitutes recovery for a person with anorexia is a question Harriet Parsons of Bodywhys often encounters in her work as a psychotherapist. <\/p>\n
[\u00a0How eating disorders are changing: \u2018I\u2019m not the stereotype. I\u2019m a man, I\u2019m plus-sized\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we talk about recovery with a teenager, we might be talking about them moving on and getting out of it. When we talk about recovery for somebody who has had an eating disorder for the majority of their adult life, we might be talking about something different,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n \u201cWe might be talking about them trying to improve the quality of their life. They might find what brings them joy. They might get a job or leave a job or do something that makes them feel happy. They might not be eating what they need to be eating, but they might be living. You\u2019re balancing all the time. I think there would now be a recognition that it might not be helpful to focus on full recovery all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past, some of the therapeutic practices for anorexia were rooted in an ignorance about what the illness, a psychiatric disorder with physical symptoms, constituted. <\/p>\n Even today the system makes it hard for people with the condition to be helped. Doctors are on rotation, patient confidentiality restricts access for carers to information, and support helplines are not useful if the patient \u2013 as is often the case \u2013 refuses to engage. \u201cHelplines are too impersonal. What people don\u2019t realise is it takes every ounce of your energy to say you have an eating disorder, you need someone to grab you at that particular time,\u201d says Mary. <\/p>\n For an older patient and their families, it\u2019s easy to feel invisible. <\/p>\n Laura Beattie, a nurse from Roscommon, got in touch with The Irish Times Magazine after an Instagram call-out and she did it for a specific reason: she never sees her story in the media. <\/p>\n On how anorexia is viewed by the general public, she is clear: \u201cIt\u2019s a stereotype of a teenage girl,\u201d she says. She believes support organisations can give up on people once they age past a certain point. \u201cAnybody, male or female, in any age bracket, can suffer from an eating disorder,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n When Laura was 28 in 2011, her mother, who had anorexia, died at the age of 58, lacking the resilience to survive after a bad bout of pneumonia. \u201cI lived with her illness all my life,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n She wishes more had been done for her mother. \u201cIt was just, \u2018We\u2019ll give you a tube in your nose and give you loads of calories\u2019. It wasn\u2019t hours of therapy. It was a physical solution to what they perceived as a physical problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Laura\u2019s mother was a former teacher near Ballina in Co Mayo, with artistic sensibilities. \u201cShe wanted to study art, but my granny was adamant she was going to be a teacher. It wasn\u2019t really what she wanted to do.\u201d Her mum\u2019s father had died when she was very young, and she married a divorcee, Laura\u2019s dad, at a time in Ireland when society would have made them both subject to moral judgment.<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to tell why someone develops anorexia, but perfectionism and desire for control may form part of a personality type more likely to be at risk, says Parsons. \u201cIt might be that you\u2019re driven, a high achiever, you may have a tendency towards being anxious or perfectionist. Added to that is internal things like not feeling good in yourself, it might be low self-esteem or self-worth.\u201d<\/p>\n Laura knows her mother had low self-esteem. She saw it every day.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way she spoke about herself was heartbreaking. She would say, \u2018I\u2019m no good. You don\u2019t deserve a mother like me.\u2019 She was always apologising. She never showed any compassion for herself. She would have tried to take her own life a few times because she felt so hopeless.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was punishing her body because deep down she had a wound she couldn\u2019t cope with.\u201d<\/p>\n The effect of her mother\u2019s anorexia was profound in the household. Laura\u2019s father was consumed with keeping his wife alive, tube-feeding her via a nasogastric tube nightly for three or four years at the end. As a teenager, Laura, an only child, looked on \u201cfrom the sideline\u201d, seized by waves of anger and remorse. <\/p>\n Seeking therapy after the birth of her first child in 2016, she says, \u201cI felt so guilty for feeling angry that she didn\u2019t do what she should have done as a mother, nurturing and loving and protecting.\u201d <\/p>\n When Laura was doing her Leaving Certificate, her mother attempted suicide. Her father then had a heart attack and was rushed to intensive care. With both parents critically ill, her friends\u2019 parents were the ones who ferried Laura to school and home. <\/p>\n Nobody in a medical setting offered Laura counselling, beyond handing her a book on emotional intelligence to read when she was aged 10. <\/p>\n Laura had postnatal depression after the birth of her first daughter and realised she needed to unpick the trauma of her childhood, to piece the puzzle of her old shattered life together. \u201cBecoming a mother made me really reflect on my own mother,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd what she didn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving a parent with a psychiatric illness, you develop a wound as a child that doesn\u2019t really heal. It affects your own self-worth. It\u2019s like, am I not worth being here for?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an empty space. You\u2019re so vulnerable to [questions like]: why am I not enough for them to want to be better? You always carry a little bit of that feeling, but it\u2019s managing it. And feeling like, I am good enough, but I have to work very hard at reminding myself that I am.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0\u2018Just eat\u2019 is the worst advice for someone with an eating disorderOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Getting past the past isn\u2019t easy. Shame, helplessness and regret crop up regularly when in conversation with Mary, the former nurse. <\/p>\n Mary also feels lucky that she managed to get help at a time when more support is becoming available. In 2016 there were five eating-disorder specialists within the whole of the Health Service Executive (HSE). Now there are approximately 110 dedicated eating-disorder clinicians from the national clinical programme working in different teams around the country. <\/p>\n Twenty new specialist eating-disorder beds are to be opened around the country, under new plans being developed by the HSE. <\/p>\n Help for Mary came in a slow, staggered way, in the decade after her daughter, then aged 14, was suspected by Mary of having an eating disorder and referred to the HSE\u2019s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Camhs). \u201cI was always mindful of her and I felt so embarrassed because I thought, I\u2019m such a poor role model. It really hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCamhs rang me and said, \u2018Right, will you bring her over?\u2019 We brought her over and it completely changed her life. Really what helped was the talking therapy. She saw a psychologist. It was a whole-team approach, over about two years. I can confidently say that she has recovered from anorexia. She came out the other side a strong, independent young lady. She learnt skills there that I would be jealous of.\u201d<\/p>\n While they were with Camhs, Mary was asked whether she would like professional advice to help her support her child. Referred to a clinic, a consultant diagnosed Mary with anxiety and prescribed medication. After her daughter was successfully treated, Mary\u2019s body started to give up on her.<\/p>\n![\"Laura](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/KHMDIMC3LBCBVAIH2UO63ACZCU.jpg\")
Laura Beattie with her mother <\/p>\n![\"Laura](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GIM2B27VGJEUFJ3WJDWDCFAB2Q.jpg\")
Laura Beattie as a baby with her mother <\/p>\n