Eight and a half years since Averil Hart died, her father asks when well-meaning policies will be turned into action

• UK needs national register for eating disorder deaths, MPs say

It is more than eight years since Averil Hart died after being found passed out in her university room, but the words left in her diary are etched in her father’s mind. “She said: ‘dear God please help me’ and that was four or five days before she collapsed,” says Nic Hart. “It sums up what many young people desperately need. They need help. Here we are eight-and-a-half years on and what has changed?”

Averil, who was diagnosed with anorexia aged 15, was taken to Norfolk and Norwich University hospital at 19 in a “severely malnourished” state but received no nutritional or psychiatric support during her four-day admission, according to an inquest into her death. She was then urgently transferred to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge.

Call for better data collection on anorexia and bulimia comes as experts warn of underreported crisis

• ‘Young people need help’: parents call for change in eating disorder care

Eating disorder deaths need to be recorded on a national register, MPs are urging, as experts warn of an underreported “crisis” in the growing number of people in the UK experiencing life-threatening disorders.

While Office for National Statistics figures show 36 people died in 2019 from conditions such as anorexia, there are concerns this underestimates the true toll. A high-level US study gives estimated data on death rates that when transposed to the UK indicates that the annual death rate could be about 1,860 people a year.

Holliday says she hopes her announcement helps to stop the idea that ‘only very underweight people can have anorexia’

Eating disorder campaigners have hailed a decision by the American plus-size model Tess Holliday to announce she is receiving treatment for anorexia, saying that it is helping to stop the idea that “only very underweight people can have anorexia”.

Holliday, who has 2.1 million followers on Instagram and has been featured on the pages of Vogue, recently wrote on Twitter: “I’m anorexic and in recovery … I’m the result of a culture that celebrates thinness and equates that to worth but I get to write my own narrative now. I’m finally able to care for a body that I’ve punished my entire life and I am finally free.”

Comedian Bella Younger thought wellness Instagrammers were ripe for parody. Soon she was drawn in herself. Could Deliciously Stella find her way back to reality?

I have always wanted to be a comedian or television presenter, but never knew how I’d make it happen. After years of working in TV production, pestering executives to put me in a show, I conceded that I might have to demonstrate to them what I could do in order to prove my worth. This is how I ended up spending a Friday afternoon in April 2015 secretly writing a standup show at my desk, hoping to one day take it to the Edinburgh fringe.

“Bella,” said my boss, Faye, over the top of her computer, “can you do some research on wellness, please? Someone called Deliciously Ella’s got the fastest-selling cookbook in the country and I want to know if we should put her on the telly.” I had been blissfully unaware of wellness until that point. As far as I was concerned, it was just the opposite of illness, like not having a cold. The idea that you could be more well had never crossed my mind.

Sister writes that Sushila, 36, a freelance journalist, was ‘a best friend and an inspiration’

A daughter of the anti-racism campaigner Trevor Phillips has died after living with anorexia for more than two decades.

Sushila Phillips, 36, who worked as a freelance journalist, “died peacefully in her own bed” last weekend with her parents at her side.

In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, the National Eating Disorders Association is on 800-931-2237. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope.