Tina McGuff

Specialist Speaker Tina McGuff: helping individuals and organisations understand and cope with eating disorders and mental health challenges. 

In her memoir, Seconds to Snap, Tina McGuff tells of her personal battle with anorexia when she was in her teens. Today she shares her story in a bid to reach more people at risk. After many years of therapy and counselling Tina today is passionate about the importance of talking about our mental health out loud, and of recognizing early signs of distress in the young especially with regard to eating disorders.

Tina says: ‘people have this impression that only rich kids get anorexia – and that it can be quite glamorous. I was a poor kid from a broken home in Dundee. And none of it was glamorous at all. It took seconds for me to snap – and a lifetime to recover. I never take my mental health for granted and I want to reach out to others now to encourage people to open up about these issues. Anorexia is such a dark, isolated world. I know that I am lucky to be alive today‘.

Tina is established now as an authority on mental health wellness and is a regular contributor on national media appearing on Lorraine, Channel 5, ITV, STV, BBC, as well as Jeremy Vine, Radio 1 and many other national and international channels. She was invited recently by the Prime Minister’s Office of Dubai to deliver talks in Dubai and in Abu Dhabi and has spent time in Arizona delivering presentations to students and to teachers.

Tina finds it very encouraging that employers around the world are now beginning to recognise the benefits of helping to look after the mental health of their employees. Organisations are beginning to understand the benefits in sustaining and improving business performance. Tina speaks to employers and employees on ways to engender and encourage resilience and mental health in the workplace. She speaks with heartfelt authority on despair and hope and how so few of us really take time out to attend to our own psychological well-being. Promoting positive mental health is now integral to a successful workplace, and right now, we need to do all we can mitigate the mental health pandemic as we come out of Covid -19.

‘We all feel so much happier when we are valued and respected’

Seconds to Snap. One Explosive Day. A Family Destroyed. My Descent into Anorexia (ISBN: 9781784183820) is published by John Blake Publishing.