CW: Eating disorders
Do you ever look around and think everyone is perfect? Attractive, fashionable, sporty, academic, musical – the list of Oxford students’ well-rounded talents can seem endless. At a university consistently ranked first in the world, excellence isn’t just encouraged; it’s expected. But beneath the polished CVs, regimented routines, and curated images of success lies a quieter pressure: to control, refine, and shrink in pursuit of an ever-moving ideal.
In an environment where discipline is praised and comparison is unavoidable, conversations around food, bodies, and health can easily slip into something darker. From casual calorie talk to hyper-fixation on exercise and productivity, eating disorder culture often hides in plain sight – normalised, and even celebrated. Behaviours that might raise alarm elsewhere are reframed as dedication, self-control, or simply ‘coping’ with the demands of Oxford life.
In recent years, concerns about eating disorders among students have grown, raising questions about how well Oxford is equipped to respond. While the University promotes a range of welfare services, from college-based support to NHS provision across the city, students’ experiences of accessing help are often fragmented, delayed, or unfulfilling.
Long waiting lists, unclear pathways, and an emphasis on self-advocacy can leave those most at risk slipping through the cracks. And when high achievement masks high risk, the question remains: who is really being looked after?
Eating disorders in Oxford
According to a 2016 survey organised by the Student Union, at least 1,200 people at the University of Oxford were struggling with an eating disorder – figures which only include those who felt able to speak out. For a condition widely acknowledged to be under-reported, particularly among high-functioning individuals, this number alone suggests a far broader issue embedded within the student body.
Since then, pandemics, politics, and global instability have only intensified existing pressures. Lockdowns disrupted routines and access to support, online learning blurred the boundaries between work and rest, and widespread uncertainty heightened anxiety around control and stability.
The correlation between eating disorders and stress is already well-established, and at an institution like Oxford – layered with academic intensity, social comparison, and recent global upheaval – those risk factors are compounded.Oxford Centre for Eating Disorders sees this pattern in its patients. The private clinic told Cherwell that “many patients we see are high achievers and perfectionistic”, adding that “the pressures of their studies can be very challenging”. This combination – ambition paired with vulnerability – is particularly acute in an environment that rewards endurance and downplays visible struggle.
It is clear that this issue is particularly prevalent at the University of Oxford. The Centre estimated to Cherwell that “30-40% of our patients are students – the majority from Oxford University rather than Brookes”. With such a significant overlap between the student population and professional services in the city, the line between “student welfare” and “local healthcare provision” becomes increasingly blurred. It also raises pressing questions about how responsibility is shared – or deferred – between institutions, especially when treatment costs themselves become an immediate and exclusionary barrier for many students.
Must the University do more?
It is increasingly clear that more coordination between the University and external healthcare providers would play a crucial role in improving support. While the Centre confirmed that a recent Q&A session was held for college nurses in an effort to improve frontline support, they told Cherwell that “we did used to have links to the University’s counselling service, but less so in recent years”.
Oxford University Counselling Service (UCS) positions itself as a first point of contact for students facing a wide range of personal difficulties. However, its website also warns of a clear limit to the support it can offer: “If you need longer or more specialised therapeutic treatments to help you address psychological difficulties then you will need to be referred to the appropriate NHS medical, psychological or psychiatric services.”For those with eating disorders, NHS referral often appears less as a solution but rather the start of another exhausting process. Students describe long waiting lists, impersonal administrative systems, and a sense that continuity of care is lacking – particularly for those who have already navigated NHS mental health services at home.
One second-year student recalled waiting three years for regular sessions under NHS services in the South East. During this time, they described “constant requestioning about the nature of my issues for ‘admin purposes’ – essentially retelling my life story to an unenthusiastic counsellor who merely provided the same responses. It felt like an endless cycle – one that I did not want to start again at uni”.
Past local data does little to reassure students with similar concerns. A May 2021briefing from NHS Oxford Health reported expected waiting times of 18 months for NICE-concordant intervention (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) for individuals with “severe and high-risk” eating disorders. Those assessed as having “moderate severity” were expected to wait up to 24 months. For a condition where early intervention is widely recognised as critical, such delays raise serious questions about whether existing pathways are fit for a transient, high-pressure student population.The same applies on a college level, where welfare provision is often presented as a cornerstone of student support. Pembroke College told Cherwell that it offers a wide “rangeof welfare and wellbeing services” tailored to individual circumstances, including those struggling with eating disorders. Students are able to access one-to-one support from members of the welfare team, described by Pembroke as consisting of “our Welfare Lead, our Student Support and Wellbeing Tutor, the Chaplain, the Junior Deans, our Academic Office team including a Disability Coordinator, JCR and MCR Welfare Representatives, and student peer supporters”.
Yet while this network appears extensive on paper, its function in cases of eating disorders is largely intermediary. Pembroke noted that support typically involves listening, monitoring, and signposting – assisting students in navigating appointments with college-linked GPs, University-wide services such as the Counselling Service, and NHS provision. Colleges may liaise with external providers where appropriate, but they do not offer treatment themselves.
This distinction is echoed across the collegiate University. Lincoln College told Cherwell: “Students have full access to our welfare provision but in the case of an eating disorder, we would normally expect to refer to an appropriate medical professional(s). Their primary treatment would be by a medical professional.”
However, in practice, responsibility for care is often transferred rapidly from colleges to external services, most commonly the NHS, which faces well-documented delays in accessing specialist eating disorder treatment as a result of chronic underfunding and systemic strain. During these prolonged waiting periods, students remain embedded in the intense academic and social environment of Oxford, yet may receive little structured support beyond monitoring, check-ins, and signposting. The result is not a failure of individual colleges, but a wider systemic gap in which students find themselves caught between services – acknowledged as unwell, but unable to access timely, meaningful treatment.
As eating disorder culture becomes evermore prevalent the question is not whether pathways exist, but whether a system built on referral rather than continuity can adequately meet the needs of students for whom delay is itself a big risk factor.
A particularly pernicious environment
Oxford is an environment where everything is dialed up to 10; a ‘work hard play hard’ culture that can exacerbate disordered eating. In a university where food is woven tightly into social life – from catered accommodation and formal halls to kebabs after a night out – eating is rarely a private act. Meals are communal and often highly visible. For students struggling with eating disorders, this can make it feel as though the battle never ends, played out repeatedly in public spaces where absence, refusal, or deviation is immediately noticed.
For those affected, the pressure to eat dessert at a formal, drink an extra pint, or finish the night with a cheesy chips can be deafening. While re-feeding may be clinically beneficial in the short term, it is often followed by intense grief, guilt, or anxiety.
These feelings can be all-consuming, bleeding into academic work, friendships, and rest, and leaving little mental space for recovery. Over time, many students describe retreating from social settings altogether, gravitating instead towards isolation – one of the few environments where food can be avoided, controlled, or simply not discussed. In a universitythat prizes endurance and self-mastery, the capacity to function while unwell can be mistaken for success. High achievement becomes a mask, concealing behaviours that might otherwise prompt concern, and allowing eating disorders to persist unnoticed or unchallenged.
This withdrawal can be easily misread within Oxford’s culture of independence and self-discipline. Skipped meals are normalised by busy timetables; excessive exercise is reframed as productivity; weight loss is quietly praised as evidence of ‘control’. In such an environment, behaviours associated with eating disorders are not only obscured but, at times, inadvertently rewarded. The line between health, discipline, and harm becomes blurred, particularly when ambition and aspiration echo the same language as illness.
Yet the consequences of this culture are cumulative. Isolation deepens distress; delayed intervention worsens outcomes; and a fragmented support system struggles to respond to students who appear, on the surface, to be coping. When social life is structured around food and institutional support is structured around referral, students with eating disorders are left navigating both constant exposure and limited protection.
One first-year student at The Queen’s College said: “The constant conflict between feeling able to enjoy what are meant to be ‘the best years of my life’ at a university that I have worked so hard to get into, versus the frustratingly never-ending temptation of the eating disorder voice is so exhausting.” Another told Cherwell: “It’s like I know the demands of that voice are bad, but the perfectionist culture I am surrounded by means I cannot have a problem — I don’t have time to have a problem.” They pointed to the University’s hustle culture as a reason to “just keep going – and struggling”.
What can be done?
As Oxford continues to celebrate its reputation for excellence, the question remains whether it is willing to examine the cultural and structural conditions that make recovery so difficult. Addressing rising eating disorder culture requires more than expanding services; it demands a reckoning with how ambition, social life, and success are defined, and who is left behind when those definitions go unchallenged.
Undeniably, supporting a 26,000-strong student body is a formidable task. Yet, as discussions around harmful body ideals resurface – from media-reported returns of ‘heroin-chic’ to pervasive social pressures – Oxford faces a pivotal moment of reflection. This is not only about expanding services or improving referral systems, but about examining the everyday culture that shapes students’ relationship with food, bodies, and achievement.
Addressing this issue requires more than policy; it demands attention to the small, often overlooked pressures embedded in academic, social, and collegiate life – pressures that, cumulatively, determine whether support systems are effective or whether students are left navigating high-risk spaces alone.
Support is out there, and recovery is possible – however incompatible it may seem with the already extraordinarily intense academic environment of Oxford. In a university where intensity is normalised and vulnerability can feel like a liability, change does not always begin with formal interventions alone.It can start quietly, in everyday moments: in the way we speak with friends about food and our bodies, in the willingness to check in rather than compare, and in the act of making space for a whole person – alongside their achievements. In an environment shaped by pressure, those small acts of care can be powerful, reminding students that survival is not the same as success, and that asking for help is not a failure, but a form of resilience.
Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is affected by eating disorders or disordered eating, support is available. Alongside college welfare teams and the University Counselling Service, you can also reach out to specialist charities such as Beat Eating Disorders, whose helpline is available Monday to Friday from 3pm to 8pm.
If you are in need of urgent help or medical advice for yourself or someone else, please contact 999, or the Samaritans on 116 123 if you or someone else is in immediate danger. For medical advice, you can also contact your GP or NHS 111.
Beat Eating Disorders: 0808 801 0677 (England) | [email protected]
