Can you imagine waking up one day to discover that without ever intending it, you have written and published a book for Cambridge University Press? It sounds too good to be true, and in fact it was by no means simple or easy, but it was certainly unintentional.

For many years we have cared for people with severe eating disorders. Sometimes we’ve had to come to terms with tragic deaths, sometimes we’ve rejoiced to see patients and whole families enjoying renewed quality of life. All too often we’ve been frustrated to see that treatment might have been earlier, more effective or more equitable, if more of our professional colleagues better understood the nature of eating disorders. In reports for courts and coroners we have seen glaring neglect, even by the most compassionate and otherwise skilful clinicians.

Both of us served on the Executive of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Eating Disorders and saw that even expert colleagues struggle to find time in our busy clinical duties to teach the trainees and juniors all that they need to know. There are very few eating disorders training posts even within psychiatry . We resolved to create a series of worksheets to structure weekly supervision meetings, guiding clinicians who are new to the field, directing them to key resources, suggesting tasks to increase confidence and knowledge, and providing MCQs to test what is learned. The worksheets could be digested alongside an ‘apprenticeship’ with a master clinician, raising the quality of the experience without too much extra stress on staff.

We were grateful to the Scottish Academy of Forensic Psychiatry, whose ‘NEW2’ pack is available to learners in that field, and who confidentially shared their material as a model for ours. We put in a couple of intensive caffeine-fuelled weekends in Edinburgh dining rooms and cafes to thrash out the first draft. Colleagues wrote or edited some of the chapters, offered clinical vignettes, and trialled the material with their own juniors. The Carer rep on the faculty group co-wrote one of the chapters to further incorporate lived experience into service delivery.

Before we could launch our ‘learning pack’, CUP started a new role as publishing partners with the College, and offered to make this into a book. It was an education in itself to work alongside their expert editors and designers. The beautiful cover they produced feels like gift wrap around our own labour of love. Indeed, this book is one that we do want you to judge by the cover! It shows a broken bowl repaired using the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which employs pure gold to mend the cracks, producing something more wonderful than if it had never been damaged. This is how we see our recovered patients, and we also experience the work of our expert colleagues as pure gold.

‘New to Eating Disorders’ by Jane Morris and Caz Nahman is available in paperback, ebook and on Cambridge Core.

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