PAM Nugent’s son Laurence died in 2009 following a battle with an eating disorder. He was 24 years old.
Since 2012, she and her family have been on a mission to educate Northern Ireland about eating disorders.
She says there are a lot of misunderstandings about the illness.
“It is not about vanity or attention seeking. It is a mental health issue,” Pam said.
“People need to see that and not feel the shame and the stigma of it.” The Laurence Trust charity was
founded by Pam and her eldest son Christopher in 2012.
Some of the five trustees are friends of Laurence.
Pam explained the motivation for starting the charity.
“I am not an expert. I am just a mum. We are a family who lived with a young man who had an eating disorder.
“By us becoming a charity and engaging with people with various eating disorders and talking to people who are therapists and support people, we have come to learn more about it.”
Laurence was born in Ballygowan. They lived in Carryduff for 20 years.
Now Pam and her family live in Crossgar, where the charity is based.
The goals of the charity are prevention, recovery and education. “Laurence didn’t get any medical
intervention or help,” Pam said. “He was a young man. He wanted
help, but he was too ashamed, and that is the start of the problem.
“There is a stigma attached to men and eating disorders, and the shame they feel. That is a barrier to stopping men getting the help they so desperately need.”
Laurence’s story is a terribly sad one. Pam has been sharing her son’s story for the past 14 years now, hoping it will help both men living with an eating disorder and their carers.
“What is important for your readers, and young men, to know is that it is not about image.
Laurence Nugent (right) with his brother, Chris
“An eating disorder is a mental health condition.
“It is how men cope with everyday living.
“It is how they cope with being in work, how they look, how they feel, their self-confidence and self-esteem.
“I am not saying that men are weak, but they are blood and bones the same as women, and they have their emotions.
“I don’t think we women realise how sensitive and caring men can be and are.”
Pam explained that there are numerous types of eating disorders.
They include anorexia, which is where people try to stay as thin as possible.
They do so in a number of ways, such as not eating enough food, exercising too much, taking laxatives or making themselves sick.
Bulimia can be signified by someone binge eating and then ridding the body of the food soon after.
There is also body dysmorphia, where a person obsesses over
perceived defects and flaws in their appearance.
“Body fitness is good for people. But when it becomes an obsession, when it dictates their lives, or dictates how they feel about themselves then that is where the damage is done.
“Most of these things is how Laurence felt.”
She believes that Laurence began to feel pressure from a very early age. Laurence went to St Mary’s Ballygowan where Pam was a secretary. Then he moved on to St Colmcille’s in Crossgar.
“Men living with eating disorders lack self-esteem, and self-confidence. They have feelings of inadequacy, they don’t feel good enough.
“You see this in boys as young as 11.
“When we look back at our son’s life, he was very stressed out when he was 11 because he was in the big school.
“He was very self-aware.
“That was him feeling inadequate and not good enough.”
Pam said that those with an eating
disorder can often have high emotional intelligence. They are perfectionists.
Pam said these are traits that she noticed in her son.
“Laurence would have went to the barbers to get his hair cut. Then he would come home and say to my other son Christopher: ‘Would you cut my hair? He hasn’t done that right’.
“Christopher wouldn’t touch his hair because Laurence was a perfectionist.”
Other traits became apparent during Laurence’s life.
“Every one of Laurence’s friends thought that Laurence had lost a lot of weight.
“We thought that it was diabetes because that is in our family. We thought it was cancer.”
Pam and her family also noticed how food became an issue.
“We noticed that he would start to go to the bathroom while eating. He would have had a bowl of soup, a whack of sandwiches. He would go up to the bathroom, he’d be sick, then he
would say he was starving.
“Then he would eat extra dinner. It
was all food, food, food.
“When he was eating loads of food,
he was vomiting and no healthy goodness was going into him.
“We did the grocery shop on Saturday and by Monday there was nothing left. He would have eaten it all and purged.”
When Pam spoke to Laurence about it, then conflict happened.
“There were more rows than enough.
“He wouldn’t listen to us when we told him that he wasn’t well and that there was something wrong.
“We thought that we would buy the food, let him eat, because it was easier than arguing and disagreeing.
“That is where it started to control his life.”
But Pam pointed out that it is important to remember that an eating disorder is not an issue with food.
It is a symptom of underlying mental health issues.
She said: “To the outside world the
eating disorders seem destructive and dangerous but to the sufferer it is comfortable and controlling.
“It is like an alcoholic. The only way they can quash their emotions and their stresses is to take a drink, get blocked and then they don’t have to think about it.
“That is the same as a person with an eating disorder.
“They can’t cope with living every day, with no self-esteem or confidence.
“What do they do? They starve themselves, or they binge eat, they may not purge as a person with bulimia does.
“That becomes a routine.”
What made the issue more complicated was Laurence’s career.
He worked as a care assistant in Purdysburn, where he was in contact with those with mental health issues.
“He was working with people in mental healthcare and his biggest fear was being sectioned.
“But in our hearts Laurence needed that professional help.”
However, Pam’s son couldn’t ask for
help, which is the heartbreaking element.
“Laurence wanted help but he wouldn’t allow us to help. He was over 18.
“When a person is over 18 you can’t force a person to go and get help.
“All you can do is educate them and help them understand what they are doing to their own body.
“We found it very hard to encourage Laurence.”
She said that there are ways that people will hide their illness.
“People who have eating disorders tend to wear baggy clothes to hide their thinness.”
But Laurence couldn’t hide his illness forever.
He died of heart failure in September 2009, at the age of 24.
“He had lost a lot of weight. He was eight stone five, he was a lad of 11 stone three, five foot seven,” Pam said.
“His heart couldn’t cope anymore.”
There are many lessons to learn from his story.
One of those is that the illness can happen to everyone, and it is not always obvious who it affects.
“They carry that feeling through their life because they have never got help for it or support for it.
“They keep burying it and hope that no one will notice.
“When Laurence died the first thing one of his best friends said to me was ‘Why did he not talk to me?’
“The reason was that he was a proud young man, and he felt it was difficult to talk.
“It is just a pity that he didn’t have the confidence to confide.”
But now Pam, Chris and the Laurence Trust charity endeavour to provide support for those people who are affected by the condition.
The Laurence Trust offers an information helpline, as well as booklets and literature that can help those caring for a loved one with an eating disorder.
They don’t provide therapy, but they will listen and provide advice – from a family viewpoint.
“If I am asked, I will say ‘on reflection this is what I have learnt’ and if Laurence was here right now this is what I would tell him.
“With the right professional support you will recover from an eating disorder. Not everyone dies.
“That is an important message for parents and partners.
“There is hope, but that person has to take the first step and understand that their partners and families and friends are there.
“More could be done. I want to
know what more can we do to reach out to eating disorder sufferers.
“That is what the health service should be doing. They know that there are people who are struggling with eating disorders.
“How do they reach out to them?”
As part of The Laurence Trust’s work, Pam provides presentations to community groups and mental health groups, as well as schools.
“Laurence has left us a legacy, that is The Laurence Trust.
“If my Laurence was standing here right now he would be shouting, ‘Get support, get educated, get information, and prevent me from being the way that I am’. I know that for a fact because he was a compassionate young man.
“We have lost our son. Christopher has lost his brother. It is still as raw as it was 16 years ago, but I have learnt as a mum how to channel this and this is the way Laurence would have done it.
“Be aware of peer pressure and be aware of people who suffer in silence.”
The Laurence Trust was featured in a documentary in 2019.
Hosted by Freddie Flintoff, the documentary was called ‘Living with Bulimia’.
In it the former England cricketer investigated the illness, as he himself has suffered from it.
“We lived in Carryduff at the time and Freddie Flintoff came to our home.
“When I described Laurence to Freddie, he said to me that I was
describing him.
“He was one of the nicest people I
have ever met. He was an unassuming man.”
Pam sees that work that Freddie was doing as important as she and her family share his ambition of promoting better understanding of eating disorders, so that we can spot them and help those who are affected.
The stats are stark.
Ten percent of people with an eating disorder in Northern Ireland are male. Three out of four suicides in Northern Ireland are male.
Anorexia kills more people than any other mental health condition.
Eating disorders in children under 10 are more likely to affect boys.
Pam said: “I don’t like the word ‘disorder’. To me it is eating distress, because men are in distress in trying to deal with the demands that are made upon them and within themselves, their stresses and worries and lack of confidence and self-esteem.
“The message we would like to get across is that you can survive if you get the right support.”
For more information you can visit the charity’s website – https://www.thelaurencetrust.co.uk/.
Eating disorder awareness week takes place from February 23 to March 1.
The local charity has also been selected by current Newry, Mourne and Down District Council chairperson Philip Campbell as one of the charities that he wants to support during his term of office.
