CONVERSATIONS about eating disorders in the workplace are awkward and embarrassing but could well save lives, as one Bicester woman has proved.

Former sufferer Placi O’Neill, 43, fought bulimia for more than 10 years while in Oxford, and was coughing up blood by the time her boss offered a helping hand.

The former Oxford Brookes University student would compulsively gorge herself on biscuits and chocolate, then make herself sick as a coping mechanism.

She said: “It was very much a punishment method to me. I was a chubby teen and I started to blame myself for being a fat person.

“If I was a failure at school, had an argument with my parents or broke up with a boyfriend, I would raid the cupboard for biscuits and eat to the point where I couldn’t eat any more.

“Then you feel really disgusted and guilty about it, and that’s when you make yourself sick.

“That went on for years. I was very good at hiding it.”

In her mid-20s in 1996, Ms O’Neill, by then working in a playgroup in Cowley Road, had lost several teeth and her internal organs had begun to shut down.

She said: “My boss saw the tell-tale signs. I was nibbling at food, hiding it in the bin or picking bits off kids’ birthday cakes.

“She sat me down and said ‘I’m here to listen’.”

With support from her GP and others Ms O’Neill, a mother of 10-year-old Connor and working at Heyford Park, near Bicester, recovered completely and is an ambassador for Beat, the eating disorder charity.

But she said people with her condition are often hard to spot and others must take the initiative.

According to a Beat survey of 650 people, about 40 per cent of employers are “unhelpful” to workers who are in recovery. Two thirds could not get support for their illness at work and four out of five said they felt employers were not “informed”.

Ms O’Neill added: “A lot of people don’t understand that you have a problem with food.

“ This is a mental illness that we are not used to and it’s also very awkward. It’s not pretty. We tend to forget what makes us embarrassed, but it could be your own child.”

Andrew Radford, chief executive of Beat, said “Employers can play an important role in supporting recovery. The stigma and misunderstanding experienced by so many in the workplace must be replaced with support and compassion championed by a formal mechanism of support.

“The responsibility for early identification and treatment of these serious mental illnesses should not lie with the health service alone.”