‘EATING DISORDER HELP NOT ENOUGH’
RTE’s Prime Time reveals crisis in care for kids & adults
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THERE is a lack of services to help children and adults battling eating disorders — which dramatically increased following a “tsunami” of referrals after the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been revealed.
The findings were laid bare in a RTE Prime Time special which showed that, despite the implementation of a new model of care in 2018 that was aimed at establishing multi-disciplinary teams nationwide, gaps in service still remain.
It had been hoped there would be 16 service teams in place but at present only 11 are operational.
The show also revealed there were no CAMHS (Child & Adolescence Mental Health Services) or
Child and Adolescent eating disorder teams in place in the northwest, midlands or midwest.
Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Fiona McNicholas, told Prime
Time: “Post-Covid, what we saw was an increased referrals of eating disorder internationally. They referred to it as a tsunami of eating disorders, and we saw that again here in Ireland.”
Right now, the HSE only operates four CAMHS inpatient psychiatric units — one in Cork, one in Galway, and two in Dublin.
Mum Amy Hanley told the programme how she struggled to access the necessary services for her daughter after she was diagnosed with an eating disorder during the pandemic.
Meals
She revealed there are long wait times for treatment and told how she became aware that her daughter was skipping meals shortly after she started secondary school. Amy explained: “That’s kind of when we realised there is a serious problem here and we brought her to the GP…she was referred on to CAMHS. “A year and a half she was on the waitlist for a mental illness with the highest mortality rate.
“She was waiting so long that it gave it time to really get its grips in her.”
Lauren Gaffney developed an eating disorder in her early teens and was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa while in transition year.
Now 27, Lauren is being seen by her GP and a dietician, but struggling to get the help she says she needs because her Body Mass Index (BMI) is too low.
“I’m unwell, I need support, but yet I’m not at a heavy enough position in order to receive support. Our health professionals will only engage with me if I’m a certain BMI,” she said.
The show also revealed that anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness.
Last night, Harriet Parsons of Bodywhys, the Eating Disorders Association of Ireland, said: “I don’t think the public do have a recognition that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.
“The figure for mortality rate with females with anorexia is 200 times the suicide rate for females.”