Lives are being lost and families torn apart because of “woefully inadequate care” for people with eating disorders, according to a group of MPs.
The “alarming” rise in disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, over the past decade, has now become an “emergency”, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eating Disorders says in a report.
Greater awareness about different types of eating disorders and how they affect males and females of all ages and ethnicities is urgently needed.
NHS England acknowledged services were under extreme pressure but said all mental-health trusts now offered teenagers and young people early help.
At 13, Olimata Taal responded to issues at home by denying herself food and over-exercising. It was the only thing she felt she could control. “Eating healthier quickly became eating less, to eating nothing,” Olimata says. “I remember literally feeling like a shell of a human.”
One of the MPs, Labour’s Richard Quigley, has been through the “nightmare” of watching his own child battle an eating disorder.
Eating disorder services are “grossly” underfunded, there are barriers to accessing treatment and wide variations in care quality across the UK.
NHS England mental-health director Claire Murdoch said there was “no doubt” eating disorder services were “under extreme pressure” but more than four out of every five children and young people who needed urgent treatment started it within one week.
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