NHS ‘failing thousands of patients with eating disorders’

The NHS is “failing” thousands of patients with eating disorders who are being turned away by doctors because their condition is not deemed serious enough, campaigners have claimed.

Fashion magazine Cosmopolitan makes the stark warning as it launches a joint campaign with eating disorder charity BEAT to urge GPs to take the potentially-fatal illness more seriously and widen treatment for it.

The magazine’s editor said many vulnerable patients were falling victim to a tick box culture in the NHS, with doctors waiting for a sufferer to show extreme physical malnourishment before they begin treatment.

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An estimated 1.6 million people in the UK suffer from eating disorders, but only around half are diagnosed with either anorexia or bulimia while the rest are categorised as having an eating disorder not otherwise specified – known as EDNOS.

Campaigners say this group are often dismissed as simply being “a bit funny about food” and do not receive the care they desperately need, with some people waiting two years for treatment.

Louise Court, editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan, said: “EDNOS sufferers aren’t just being ‘a bit funny about food’, they are seriously ill.

“The NHS is amazing in so many ways, but at the same time, it’s failing so many women and men who desperately need help now, not in a year’s time.

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“We’re therefore urging GPs to move away from the ethos of merely ticking boxes when it comes to assessing eating disorders. It’s time to take a stand and help all these thousands of women who are suffering – a lot of them in silence.”

Under current NHS guidelines, women must have a body weight at least 15 per cent below the average, suffer from body image distortion and be so sick they don’t have periods before they are formally assessed as anorexic.

While to be diagnosed as bulimic patients must have an irresistible craving for food, binge eat and then try to lose weight through diet pills or by being sick – known as “purging” – and weigh well below normal.

But experts say these guidelines are too restrictive.

Clare Gerada, former chair of the Council of the Royal College of GPs, warned that Britons struggling with this mental health disorder face a lengthy wait before they receive the NHS treatment.

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She said: “With mental health, if you fall outside of the diagnostic label – and lots and lots of people do – you can’t get treatment, either until the condition gets worse, or it doesn’t get treatment full stop.

“We need mental health to be treated the same as physical health, waiting times should be put in place and there needs to be better investment.”

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