December 15, 2011 at 10:10 AM

Beat Young Ambassador, Constance Barter, speaks about her experience of speaking at The 19th International Conference on Eating Disorders in Austria this year.

After being fortunate enough to attend last year’s conference as part of the Clive Barter Bursary in memory of my late father, I was incredibly honoured to be invited back to the 19th International Conference of Eating Disorders in Austria as a keynote speaker.

The bilingual conference was set in the beautiful mountains of Tyrol and the attendees included professionals, carers and sufferers themselves from around Europe. My keynote presentation was on the Friday morning entitled: ‘A Teenager’s Insight of Suffering and Recovering from Anorexia’ in which I focused on the journey of recovery, a journey to a full recovery; techniques that were most helpful by professionals, friends and family around me; and how important it is to hold hope there for the sufferer. It went very well despite a slight technical hitch in which the electronic curtains were promptly shut instead of the sound level being increased during a video! - Not to worry though, it gave everyone a laugh!

The second part of my involvement at the conference was leading a workshop for an hour and a half on the Saturday. Now, I’ve been told that I like to talk, but an hour and a half seemed an awful long time to lead top professionals within their field for that amount of time! I emailed the Young Ambassadors three questions prior to my trip with three questions: What makes a good doctor ‘good’? Two, what makes a bad doctor ‘bad’? and three, what areas of treatment can be improved? I must thank them since they were answered so honestly and bravely and gave me plenty of helpful ammunition for my presentation.

I feel the conference was a very successful one, and such a breakthrough of a conference to have the sufferers at the forefront of the conference, and taking such a main role. I hope that this leads to more conferences listening to the voices of sufferers instead of just the new research methods and techniques...

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