The recent leak of NHS documents has brought attention to the scandalous existence of severe and enduring eating disorder (Seed) treatment pathways in the east of England. These guidelines even include the option of palliative care for patients with longstanding eating disorders. While shocking, this revelation was not entirely unexpected.
Service users often joke that the Seed treatment pathway is where they end up when all other options have failed. Outpatient services struggle to effectively treat these patients, resorting to managing their decline. However, even inpatient services do not have a clear solution – the very fact that palliative care is being considered is evidence of this.
It is disheartening that less than half of eating disorder patients achieve recovery, and approximately 20% develop a longstanding eating disorder. The treatment pathways for these patients often appear ad hoc and fail to reflect best practices. Dr Agnes Ayton, a consultant psychiatrist and vice-chair of the Royal College of Psychiatry’s faculty of eating disorders, has voiced her concerns about these “new” guidelines that include palliative care, as the institution was not consulted and does not endorse them.
The charity Beat has also strongly opposed the inclusion of palliative care for people with eating disorders, urging NHS England to address this issue urgently.
While the trend in mental health and eating disorder treatment has been towards community care, the lack of inpatient eating disorder units in the UK cannot be ignored. Wales, for example, does not even have a specialist residential unit for eating disorders. And when there are inpatient wards, they often lack adequate staffing. Understaffed wards rely on expensive “bank staff” who are unfamiliar with the complexities of eating disorders, resulting in patients being unable to make meaningful progress towards recovery.
This unequal access to resources will inevitably lead to more patients being deemed “untreatable”. Despite an 84% increase in hospital admissions for eating disorders between 2015-16 and 2020-21, if the wards themselves are crumbling, it is not surprising that patients struggle to recover and are offered palliative care as a last resort.
It is crucial to remember that recovery is possible for everyone, regardless of age, number of previous admissions, or duration of the eating disorder. Trust played a significant role in my own recovery, allowing for honest conversations with treatment staff. However, the turnover of staff within the current healthcare system makes this level of trust difficult to achieve.
Underfunded and understaffed eating disorder services hinder recovery and sometimes worsen the illness itself. Accessible services with permanent, well-trained staff would make a significant difference. Adequate funding is essential for laying the foundation of any healthcare service. Tom Quinn, Beat’s director of external affairs, agrees, emphasizing the need for the government to ensure that the promised funding for eating disorder services reaches the frontline.
Furthermore, more research is urgently needed to deepen our understanding of eating disorders. Despite accounting for 9% of individuals with mental health conditions in the UK, eating disorders receive only 1% of the funding allocated to mental health research between 2015 and 2019. Research is crucial in unraveling the development of eating disorders and discovering effective methods of treatment.
We must not prematurely give up on those who can be helped. This should not be the direction we are heading in.
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
