We do know more about it, but we still have a very long way to go, and there are more and more, as we have heard, nuances and types of eating disorder coming to light every day. We do know, given the stats that we've heard this afternoon, that anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, 60,000 people in Wales have an eating disorder, and we do know shockingly little, still, about this area of ill health. And major advances are needed in our understanding of what causes eating disorders in the first place, how to prevent them developing and how best to treat them.

Through research, we have come to learn of these different eating disorders, the way they take hold. Awareness of orthorexia, for example, which is an unhealthy obsession with eating pure food, is growing and developing. But, without research funding, eating disorders will continue to represent a significant public health issue, devastating lives, as we've heard, while also leading, of course, to high costs for the NHS. Research into eating disorders is not only necessary but is a prudent investment, because often chances for early intervention, as we've heard, are missed, treatments are then not always effective or properly tailored and, as a result, many patients are admitted for expensive hospital treatment, including in some cases to the specialist units in England, which takes a toll on the individual, of course, as well as the services themselves.

In 2020-21, the all-party parliamentary group on eating disorders conducted an inquiry into research funding across the UK, including Wales, and the inquiry found that, despite the prevalence and severity of eating disorders, they receive very little research funding. The total UK investment in terms of grant funding amounted to just £1.13 per person affected per year between 2009 and 2019. And between 2015 and 2019, just 1 per cent of the UK's already severely limited mental health research funding went towards research on eating disorders. This despite people with eating disorders accounting for around 9 per cent of the total number of people with a mental health condition in the UK.

The inquiry also found that a historic lack of investment has led to a vicious cycle. There are few active researchers and research centres looking at this, and therefore very little research is published. And this has helped stigmatising attitudes persist, which reinforce the small capacity of the field and its lack of funding. A funding target for the UK eating disorder research field should, as an absolute minimum, be based on parity within mental health research, and the Welsh Government should work with partners within and beyond our borders to help realise this aim.