Record numbers of anorexia sufferers - some aged just nine - are being admitted to hospital, according to shocking figures. File picture
Record numbers of anorexia sufferers – some aged just nine – are being admitted to hospital, according to shocking figures.
Every night, 350 hospital beds across England on average are taken up by a patient desperately ill with anorexia, bulimia or another eating disorder. The figures have doubled in a decade.
Last year, 15 children aged only between five and nine were admitted to hospital with eating disorders, underlining fears that unhealthy obsessions with food are developing very early.
There is also growing concern that the NHS is worsening the crisis by refusing to treat patients because they are not deemed thin enough.
Many clinics turn patients away until they fall below a certain body weight. One young woman told this when she appealed for help condemned it as a ‘perverse incentive’ to lose weight.
The figures come after the NHS was heavily criticised in a report by the Patients Association. It revealed how a gifted 19-year-old died following failings by GPs, hospital doctors and psychologists.
Averil Hart was meant to have weekly check-ups but was allowed to become so thin that she slurred her words and was later found collapsed in her student flat. Patients with anorexia, bulimia or other eating disorders accounted for 122,150 bed nights in 2012/13.
This is up from 100,550 in 2011/12, said the Health and Social Care Information Centre. In contrast, 51,878 bed days were taken up by such patients in 2002/3.
A total of 2,381 patients were admitted to hospital last year, three-quarters with anorexia. The figure is up from 2,287 in the previous 12 months.
Girls aged 15 are by far the most likely to be taken to hospital, with 200 admitted last year.
Charities said these figures are the ‘tip’ of the iceberg as they do not include thousands of sufferers battling eating disorders at home.
SO WEAK SHE COULD NOT WALK
Laura Willmott, who died from anorexia aged just 18. She weighed just 5st when she died
When she collapsed and died, former private schoolgirl Laura Willmott weighed barely 5st.
The 18-year-old had fought anorexia for five years and was admitted to hospital when she was so thin that she could barely walk.
But she was discharged 11 days later when doctors deemed her ‘physically fit’. They did not discuss their decision with her parents as she was over 18.
Miss Willmott, who went to Colston Girls School, Bristol, was taken by her mother to A&E in October 2011.
After being discharged, she continued to starve herself at home and refused to see a GP.
The teenager, who hoped to be a nurse, suffered cardiac arrest a month later and died of brain damage a week later.
At her inquest in February this year, her mother Vickie Townsend said: ‘She became frailer and frailer. She was not strong enough to walk. To get around inside the house, she had to crawl.
‘It is impossible to describe the impact of Laura’s death on my family or explain our experience of Laura’s dreadful journey as a teenager with anorexia to her demise at 18. She was a wonderful daughter and a very talented and supremely caring human being.’
They also do not take into account patients at private clinics who have given up on the NHS due to the lengthy waiting times.
Leanne Thorndyke, of the eating disorder charity BEAT, said: ‘People often tell us that they were told their BMI (body mass index) was not low enough.
‘With most other illnesses, no-one would tell a patient to go away and come back when their problem was a lot worse.
‘Yet people with eating disorders are often made to become even more dangerously ill before getting the help they so desperately need. Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses.’
This year, a survey of 500 patients by the charity found a quarter had waited at least six months for treatment while nearly one in ten had been waiting for more than a year.
A total of 2,381 patients were admitted to hospital last year, three-quarters with anorexia. The figure is up from 2,287 in the previous 12 months. File picture
Kat Pugh, 24, of London, who has had anorexia since she was only 11, said: ‘I’m trying to get NHS treatment but I’m not deemed sick enough. It is like a perverse incentive scheme to get worse.’
Around 3 per cent of adults are thought to have an eating disorder but some estimates suggest it could be 6.5 per cent. Women make up 90 per cent of cases.
A fifth of anorexia sufferers die from complications caused by starving themselves, including organ damage or heart failure.
The proliferation of pro-anorexia websites has been blamed for the rise of eating disorders in the young, especially in girls.
There are around 400 to 500 such sites where users swap tips on how to starve themselves and boast about how few calories they have consumed.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2516569/Anorexics-aged-NHS-treating-record-total-patients-eating-illnesses.html#ixzz2mLxXk7LR
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