1. Hay P, Mitchison D, Collado AEL, González-Chica DA, Stocks N, Touyz S. Burden and health-related quality of life of eating disorders, including Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), in the Australian population. Journal of eating disorders. 2017;5(1):21.
2. Smink FR, Van Hoeken D, Hoek HW. Epidemiology of eating disorders: incidence, prevalence and mortality rates. Current psychiatry reports. 2012;14(4):406-14.
3. Arcelus J, Mitchell AJ, Wales J, Nielsen S. Mortality rates in patients with anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders: a meta-analysis of 36 studies. Archives of general psychiatry. 2011;68(7):724-31.
4. Economics DA. Investing in need: Cost effective interventions for Eating Disorders.: Butterfly Foundation for Eating Disorders; 2015.
5. Maguire S. Rethinking our response to eating disorders. The Medical Journal of Australia. 2018(16).
6. Murray SB, Griffiths S, Nagata JM. Community-based eating disorder research in males: a call to action. Journal of Adolescent Health. 2018;62(6):649-50.
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8. Bryant E, Koemel N, Martenstyn JA, Marks P, Hickie I, Maguire S. Mortality and mental health funding – do the dollars add up? Eating disorder research funding in Australia from 2009 to 2021: a portfolio analysis. Lancet Ref Health West Pac. 2023;100786.
mainstream is a multi-disciplinary team from across Australia uniting to better understand eating disorders and improve treatments
Establish a national surveillance system of health system data to monitor detection and early intervention in health services, evaluate equity and access to care.
Develop health system and economic models that evaluate current and future interventions in relation to outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and equity of access.
lived
experience
Develop a digital continuous lived experience lifetime survey (livED), using co-design principles, to ensure individual’s experiences of illness, treatment and quality of life are integrated into mainstream understanding.
Establish natural research hubs to implement translation-focused testing of accessible, effective, cost-effective, and scalable models of care into mainstream health service and policy
our solution
mainstream has been established to work across 4 key strategies:
"This is essential and important work that we have been funded to do. At the moment there is no way of tracking early identification, or any stage of identification actually, in the system. Eating disorders have an unacceptably high death rate but can be cured. There is an imperative to identify early and get treatment that works to people early.”
Professor Sarah Maguire, Director, InsideOut Institute
about mainstream
how we work
“Funding into the delivery of eating disorders treatment for both specialist and mainstream services across Australia is currently on the rise after years of limited-service provision to people and their families and carers with this illness. As more varied services become involved in the delivery of eating disorder treatment, it is critically important to ensure that we have good research from real world settings that is readily translatable, and well thought out implementation strategies to accompany them. This will ensure the best outcomes for the people who are receiving care, satisfaction for the clinicians delivering the care, and real improvements in the systems they work in.“
Danielle Maloney, Head of Service Development & Policy, InsideOut Institute
many minds
Our multidisciplinary team, including clinical experts, epidemiologists, health economists, researchers and lived experience peer researchers, use co-design principles to inform all stages of our work. This includes formulating research questions, selecting methodologies, designing interventions, interpreting results, and communicating findings - “Not about us without us”.
many hands
Australia is a world leader in public health provision for eating disorders, facilitated by service development teams established in most states. By embedding research capacity within these sites, we will assist in the development of these natural research and translation hubs for the dissemination and translation of research into practice.
many pictures
Rather than remaining locked in academic manuscripts, we are committed to making research findings accessible by presenting them in plain English with data visualisations to illustrate trends and patterns.
many opportunities
We are creating structures and supports to grow and develop new research talent with linkages to frontline health services, to genuinely build a research workforce that is passionate, experienced, and innovative. Eating disorders have one of the lowest research dollar spends compared with the other main mental health diagnostic groups [8]. We provide opportunity, support and expertise to train the next generation of research innovators with the aim of improving the lives of people with a lived and living experience of eating disorders, their families, carers and communities.
the problem
Eating disorders impact over one million Australians [1], have high mortality rates [2,3] and low rates of early detection and intervention. If detected and treated at the right time, full remission is possible, however, an early- rather than late-stage approach must be adopted by our health care system [4].
the opportunity
Unprecedented government investment into clinical care for people with eating disorders is being made available through Medicare and state health department initiatives. Rigorous evaluation is needed to ensure these investments lead to improvements in health outcomes.
the risk
Eating disorder research has had one of the lowest dollar spends of all mental illnesses [5,6]. Current data on effective interventions is limited [7], and there has been almost no research on translating these lab-tested interventions into mainstream health settings.