Warning Over Eating Disorders In Leeds Kids

There are warnings today that we need more awareness and better understanding of eating disorders.

It's as figures show 322 children aged under 17 have been treated for eating disorders by the Leeds and York NHS Partnership Trust in the past five years.

Of them, 38 were aged between six and 12 years old, and 39 were boys.

Annabel Norris developed anorexia when she was 12 after bullies at school called her 'fat' and 'ugly'. By the age of 15, doctors told her she might not live to the end of the day.

"I was constantly tired, I had to be taken out of most of my classes," she says.

"I was constantly cold, even in summer I was wearing about three different jumpers. I found it hard to concentrate, I only managed to do about six GCSEs because I was just concentrating on getting home, exercising and making sure I'd managed to do everything for that day. Because I had to do three exercise DVDs each day, at least 2,000 sit-ups, squats, running up and down the stairs, walking the dog...

"At it's worst, I couldn't walk. I was getting out of bed and just collapsing. At one point I struggled to talk, I couldn't see, and my hearing just went.

"When the doctor said I didn't have long to live, I wasn't even that bothered. I was just tired of it all. I wanted to give up. This was the third time I was in hospital, and by that point I was just tired. I'd been fighting for four years, and at that point I thought 'that's it, I'm not going to go any further'."

Annabel's now aged 23 and, despite still fighting the illness every day, she's learnt to control it and is a much healthier weight.

She hopes her story will raise awareness of eating disorders, and help people understand how complex they actually are.

"People just say 'why don't you just eat it, it's not that difficult'," she says.

"But it's not that simple. At one point I wouldn't even have a sip of water, it had got that bad. It is an illness that can kill you. I think people need to be aware of it, and try and catch it before it escalates that far. Because it does damage in the long term as well.

"It doesn't help with the catwalk and everything like that either. I applied for a modelling job and I got told I was too fat to be on the catwalk. I weighed about six and a half stone at this point."

She'd also like to see more done to tackle pro-anorexia websites, whereby sufferers post 'thinspiration' photos to encourage each other to lose more weight.

"I looked on it and there was pictures of really skinny celebrities and people that had eating disorders. One of the comments said 'you're looking beautiful, keep on going.' "Obviously at that point I was thinking 'I want to look like that', but looking back it was disgusting. We need to try to stop it, because there's people out there encouraging an eating disorder. It makes you work twice as hard to lose the weight a lot quicker."

Figures from the Leeds and York NHS Partnership Trust show a total of 868 people aged 18-30 were treated since 2010.

Consultant clinical psychologist Dr Julia Coates works at an outpatient clinic, and is warning that services are struggling to deal with the issue.

"I think there's a national shortage of inpatient eating disorder beds," she says.

"Almost all the inpatient beds in the whole of the county are full at this moment. If somebody needs an urgent bed, they're going to have to go to a medical hospital that doesn't have the skills or the expertise to treat the eating disorder.

"And outpatient services are just overwhelmed. It is quite intensive, the work that people need. It takes a lot of support for the family and the individual, and the NHS is really struggling to provide that."

Dr Julia agrees that there is a need for people to better understand eating disorders.

"There should be more awareness that it's not just about body image and the way you look," she says.

"It can be about emotional issues. And if this is about emotional issues, people need more support. People need individual therapy and to work with dieticians and that's not always available. It can be hard to come by - some GPs don't know where to refer you to, and some services are just overstretched."

As well as support for sufferers of eating disorders, Annabel and her mum Dorianne are calling for more support for the parents and families involved.

"We tried being sympathetic, we tried being strong...but it's a nightmare," says Dorianne.

"You can see the illness controlling them. I don't feel there was enough help for families. Her brother and sister were in the middle of it and kind of got forgotten because Annabelle took a lot of our attention.

"We went to a family therapy session and we always found that it's the families that are blamed. We were just a normal happy family who sat down and ate together and went on family holidays. And it was all just destroyed

"You want to do your best for your children and to think that you're not a good parent is just the worst thing in the world."