WE WANT OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD

‘I CURATE SENSITIVE GIFT SETS FOR PEOPLE WITH ANOREXIA’
Debbie Watson, 41, from Suffolk, set up Wednesday’s Child to raise awareness of eating disorders.

I developed anorexia when I went to university as a teenager. Away from my supportive, secure family home, my halls of residence were unfamiliar and frightening. We didn’t have mobile phones then so my parents had no idea from our weekly conversations on the pay-phone that there was anything wrong. It was only when I went home after the first term that my mum saw that my previously healthy, slim physique was skeletal. My shocked parents didn’t know how to deal with it, and given mental health was much less freely discussed back then, it was very much a case of keeping my battle within the family and trying our best to cope.

Desperate not to be deemed a failure,