Eating Disorder

Eating Disorder: Specialist Therapy in London

Dr Jacquet holds a Doctorate of Professional Practice in male eating disorders — the only practitioner in Europe to have completed doctoral research specifically on this subject. He treats all presentations: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, orthorexia, and the less-defined presentations that do not fit neatly into diagnostic categories.

Presentations Treated

• Anorexia nervosa — all levels of severity
• Bulimia nervosa and purging behaviours
• Binge eating disorder
• Orthorexia — obsessive dietary purity
• Disordered exercise and compulsive fitness
• Male eating disorders — specialist doctoral-level expertise
• Eating disorders in midlife and later adulthood
• Dual diagnosis — eating disorder alongside addiction, depression, or trauma

The Clinical Approach

Eating disorders are not primarily disorders of food. They are disorders of identity, control, emotion, and — often — of relationships with parents, with the body, and with the self. Treatment at Harley Street addresses the underlying structure, not only the presenting symptom.

A symptom displaced is not a symptom resolved. CBT has a role — and its limits. The person who arrives with bulimia after a course of CBT for anorexia has not recovered. They have mutated. The work at this practice goes further: into the psychological architecture that generated the eating disorder and that will generate another symptom if it is not addressed.

Treatment is integrative. Depending on the presentation and the person, the approach may draw on Jungian analysis, EMDR for trauma that underlies the disorder, art therapy, hypnotherapy, and — where appropriate — coordination with a nutritionist or medical practitioner. The practice works as part of a wider clinical network when needed.

Male Eating Disorders

Men with eating disorders are systematically underdiagnosed and underserved. They arrive later. They have often been told, explicitly or implicitly, that this is not something men develop. That is not true. The doctoral research makes the clinical picture clear: male eating disorders are common, often have a different aetiology from female presentations, and respond to treatment when that treatment is properly calibrated to the male experience.

This practice is one of very few in the UK with specialist doctoral-level expertise specifically in male eating disorders. Men in treatment here are not treated as an afterthought — the research informs the clinical work directly.

“Eating disorders are not about food. They are about a self that found, at some point, that control over food was the most reliable form of control available to it. The work is to find other forms.”

— Dr Philippe Jacquet

Eating disorders in men require a different clinical approach. Dr Philippe Jacquet holds Europe’s only DProf specifically on male eating disorders. Read the full specialist page on male eating disorder treatment.