Leading study

It’s 🏳️‍⚧️ and an important opportunity to raise awareness of eating disorders in our community. Trans, non-binary and gender diverse people are at heightened risk of eating disorders and face many barriers to accessing effective support and treatment. We are passionate about raising awareness of how eating disorders may present in our community, as well as sources of support that are available. We created a research summary with Beat to provide more information, so please check this out! We are also still looking to speak to trans, non-binary and gender diverse people who have accessed eating disorder support in Wales, so please swipe to see how you can get involved 👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻

Grace did a brilliant job presenting some preliminary findings from her PhD research on ‘Eating disorder treatment and service experiences of gender diverse and neurodivergent adults’ at the School of Psychology Year 2 conference. Well done, Grace! 🥳 We are very excited to share our findings with you once the analysis is finished! A huge thank you to the organisers of the conference and congratulations to all the presenters - it was 2 days of extremely high quality and fascinating presentations! 👏🏻👏🏻

We had a brilliant time at the South West and South Wales Eating Disorder Research Network (SWEDNet) launch event today. A highlight of the day was hearing deliver such a powerful and passionate talk about her lived experience and the incredible activism and campaigning work ! It was also lovely to meet ED researchers and clinicians from a wide variety of areas doing such exciting work. We’re excited for the next meeting!

📣 We're now recruiting for our second study to further explore the lived experiences of eating disorders in trans, gender diverse and/or neurodivergent people.

We aim to increase understanding of how eating disorders develop and present in these groups, as well as how we can improve eating disorder treatment 🏳️‍⚧️ ♾️

For this study, we are looking to interview three groups of adults (aged 18+ years) who have current or past experience of an eating disorder and experience of accessing eating disorder support in Wales. These three groups are:

1) Trans, nonbinary, and/or gender diverse adults who are also autistic and/or have ADHD.

2) Cisgender adults who are also autistic and/or have ADHD.

3) Trans, nonbinary, and/or gender diverse adults who are not autistic and do not have ADHD.

Further details can be found on the recruitment posters attached (we have separate posters for trans+ and cisgender people).

If you would like to participate and you fulfil the eligibility criteria above, please complete our Expression of Interest form via this link:
🔗 https://tinyurl.com/LEADINGInterviews
or scan the QR code displayed on the posters.

✉️ Feel free to reach out to us by email if you have any questions at: [email protected]

Our survey is now closed!

We're so grateful to everyone who took the time to participate in and share our survey. The insights you provided are very valuable to us, and will help us better understand the lived experiences of gender diverse and neurodivergent individuals with eating disorders and disordered eating.

Please keep an eye out on our social media for results and next stages in the LEADING Study!

We're so grateful to everyone who has taken part in our survey so far! Your insights are helping us better understand the diverse intersecting experiences of eating disorders, neurodivergence, and gender identity.

⏳ The survey closes on 25th July 2025, so if you'd like to take part and haven’t had chance yet — now’s the time!

📢 We're looking for cis or trans+ people who are:
- aged 18+ years
- based in the UK and fluent in English
- and have current or past experience of an eating disorder (a diagnosis or treatment experience is not needed to take part)

ℹ️ Open to both autistic and non-autistic individuals, as well as those with other neurodivergences.

🔗 Find more details in the attached flyer and access the survey link below: tinyurl.com/LEADINGStudy1

📩 [email protected]

We're so grateful to everyone who has taken part in our survey - we've had over 380 responses so far! Your insights are helping us better understand the diverse intersecting experiences of eating disorders, neurodivergence, and gender identity.

⏳ The survey closes on 25th July 2025, so if you'd like to take part and haven’t had chance yet — now’s the time!

📢 We're looking for cis or trans+ people who are:
- aged 18+ years
- based in the UK and fluent in English
- and have current or past experience of an eating disorder (a diagnosis or treatment experience is not needed to take part)

ℹ️ Open to both autistic and non-autistic individuals, as well as those with other neurodivergences.

🔗 Find more details in the attached flyer and access the survey link below: tinyurl.com/LEADINGStudy1

📩 [email protected]
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Are you an adult who has (or previously had) an eating disorder, and would you be interested in supporting a research study? Dr Kai Thomas and the Leading study team would like to learn more about your experiences so that they can improve support for people with eating disorders who are gender diverse and/or neurodivergent. They are inviting cisgender people and trans and gender diverse people to share their experiences. The study is open to both autistic and non-autistic people (as well as those with other types of neurodivergence). More information is in the attached flyer and the survey link is provided below. You can also email the team for more information on [email protected]. tinyurl.com/LEADINGStudy1

We had a brilliant time meeting lots of lovely people at .pride today! Our mascot Ollie is now very sleepy from all his hard work 😴 Thank you to everyone who came to say hello 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Did you know about our WARC Community? It is for autistic people and close family members who are interested in our work. You can read more about it here and scroll to the bottom for the link to join!: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/wales-autism-research-centre/community

We had a brilliant time at the INQYR UK Symposium on Advancing LGBTQ+ health, well-being, & resilience yesterday at the University of Birmingham 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The day was incredibly well-organised and packed full of insightful talks and poster presentations! We made some great connections with fellow q***r researchers and were lucky enough to share some of Grace's preliminary PhD findings and our work on involving people with lived experience in our research 🥳

We're getting excited for the INQYR UK Symposium next Thursday 22 May 2025 at the University of Birmingham.

Grace will be presenting a poster and Max will be giving a presentation. Hope to see you there! 🤓🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️