"How do you feel about using your real name, Ben?"

This is what I asked him yesterday. For the past... ages... he's been involved in a project run by Oxford University - an online project aimed at helping young people deal with and understand more about a wide range of teenage illnesses and conditions, one of which is teenage eating disorders, in boys as well as girls. I can't remember when Ben first met their researcher for an interview, but it was ages ago. Now, to coincide with Eating Disorders Awareness Week (11 - 17 Feb), the website is finally going live.


"How do you feel about them using your real name, Ben?" I asked, aware that on this blog and in my (soon to be published) book "Please eat... a mother's struggle to free her teenage son from anorexia" I refer to him as "Ben".

This question also came about because one of my eating disorder friends asked me how Ben felt about my book and website? How did he feel being out there in the public eye? How did he feel about the possibility that, in the future, if potential employers, for instance, traced him by his real name that his former battle with anorexia might come back to haunt him?

Well, in the case of my blog, book and websites, I use the name "Ben". I also use my maiden name, so it's relatively anonymous.

But the Oxford University project isn't. Neither was our TV interview with Lorraine Kelly nearly a year ago.

"I don't care," he said.

And the concern that, in the future, it might come back to haunt him?

"It's classed as discrimination," he said, "Just like a physical disability. Googling around and discovering that a potential or existing employee had a mental illness in the dim and distance past and therefore not hiring - or firing - them. Well, it's discrimination. It's illegal."

But that doesn't stop the stigma attached to mental illness, unfortunately.

However Ben is adamant that he is completely happy to go under his real name for the University project. He is also thrilled about my books, this blog and my websites AnorexiaBoy.co.uk and my new website. Indeed he's always nagging at me to do more to raise awareness of eating disorders in boys.

"And in any case, mum," he said. "There are plenty of other former eating disorder sufferers who go under their own name. The Young Ambassadors at BEAT, for instance. And the guy who runs the charity Men Get Eating Disorders Too [or at least we assume it's his real name]. Plus a load of other people."

Me, well, it doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother him. And I don't want to labour the point. He is so enthusiastic about raising awareness of eating disorders and using his own experience of anorexia to do this, that it really is his decision. (And I loved it when he corrected himself: he used the present tense, then promptly changed it to the past tense i.e. "I used to have anorexia...")

As to the question I put to him this morning: "Should I promote my book 'Please eat...' on my main Facebook page as well as my Batty Matty page?"

"I don't see why not," he said. "Most of your FB friends know about the eating disorder anyway. And even if they don't, then they may know of someone who is suffering - or exhibiting worrying signs. You might just help someone."

True. I'll have to think about it.