Scotland's Chief Medical Officer promises to look at eating disorder services

Bauer Radio Scotland
Author: Hope WebbPublished 1st Aug 2019
Last updated 1st Aug 2019

Scotland's Chief Medical Officer has promised to look at eating disorder services following our investigation in to the support on offer across the country.

We've been looking at what it's really like to suffer from illnesses like anorexia and try to find help across the country.

Our findings showed an 8% increase in people seeking help in the last five years. But we also uncovered that some face waiting up to eleven months to be seen by professionals.

We took our findings to the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland Catherine Calderwood. She says: "What we have across Scotland are different services that look different from each other, some of those are provided in the community, some of those are in hopsital settings. What we would like to understand better is what that looks like for individuals, people should be able to access the same help whether they live in Shetland or the middle of Glasgow.

"We must also make sure our services are adequate for them. It's not just enough to say we knew that that's down to more people accessing our services more than they did, those services still need to be adequate. 8% increase is a significant number of people that will need input across that spectrum."

The Scottish Government is also creating new guidelines for medical professionals dealing with patients with eating disorders.