Report finds people with eating disorders in Dorset are being failed
Clinicians in the county believe services have been ‘neglected’ for years
Eating disorder services across Dorset are reportedly under huge pressure as more patients seek treatment.
Earlier this week, an All-Party Parliamentary Group (AAPG) on eating disorders launched a report highlighting the “widespread neglect” within eating disorder services across the UK.
Jess Griffiths, an eating disorder psychotherapist from Poole, told us: “the provision for people with eating disorders and the treatment that's offered to them is not good enough
“Over the last five years, we have seen a surge in referrals which has made it really challenging to deliver treatment, especially when you haven't got the time or the capacity to treat everyone with the resources available.”
According to the AAPG report, people are being denied treatment for being ‘too thin,’ ‘too sick,’ ‘not sick enough,’ or are being labelled ‘untreatable,’ despite clear evidence that people can and do recover.
Eating disorders remain among the most serious, potentially life-threatening and life-altering mental illnesses but have reportedly been “overlooked and underfunded”.
However, Ms Griffiths told us funding has been invested but it hasn’t translated effectively to frontline services or meeting the needs of patients.
She said: “I believe everyone within the healthcare system needs to be trained on eating disorders: how to identify them, the symptoms involved, the high mortality risk and the need to provide more treatment for patients”.
In the past decade, there has been an alarming rise in eating disorders, a trend exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This crisis, however, predated the pandemic but now “too many people are waiting for treatment, and too many are being failed”, the AAPG report noted.
What was already a fragile support system for those affected has now collapsed under immense pressure.
There are please for health bosses to ensure all individuals with eating disorders can access timely, evidence-based treatment.
Meanwhile, the government is being urged to allocate significant funding for research into eating disorders to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment outcomes.
Ms Griffiths added: “We've increased access to services but we haven't got the resource or workforce to meet that need or even the ability to provide treatment within different settings, and it's really hard to recruit specialists eating disorder clinicians.”
Hope Virgo, campaigner and Secretariat of the APPG, stated: “The fact that individuals are being discharged with BMIs under 15 is absolutely unacceptable and a complete injustice.
“We are sending people home to die. The question we must ask is: why, in the face of overwhelming need, are we still ignoring this crisis?”