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Eating Disorder Recovery Eating Disorder Treatment

#ChangeEDTreatment Petition

It is official.

I am finally so sick of hearing stories from incredible people around the world, bravely doing battle with powerful eating disorders but receiving terrible treatment that I felt it was time to take more action.

Adult eating disorder treatment worldwide is largely inadequate and things are changing too slowly.  I am aware that a few changes are starting to happen in some very forward thinking treatment teams but these are too few and far between and in the meantime people are suffering and people are dying because the treatment offered is inadequate to the point at times of negligence.

Therefore, I realised that unless we, as a united body of an eating disorder community speak out and get our voices heard, nothing will change.

There is the old saying that, “we do things this way because that is how we have always done it…”  and now nobody knows why it was done like that to start with but that is how it has always been so that is how it continues.  This seems to be the case in eating disorder treatment… they are using old and outdated approaches because that is what is known, despite the fact it does not work and more often than not is even harmful.

Eating disorder treatment needs to change and there are approaches that could and should be used instead of the methods still practised far too widely today.

So, I started a petition.

We need to get the world to sit up and take notice.

As a community of people with a real and potentially life threatening illness, we deserve good treatment and we rarely get it.

Too many of us with eating disorders are recovering despite poor treatment or we have left treatment to recover unsupported because the treatment provided did more harm than good.

Please, support this petition to #ChangeEDTreatment.

Sign it, share it, shout it from the rooftops!!!

Even if it is too late for me or for you or your loved one to get the right treatment, let’s change it for the others – people who could recover faster and whose lives could be so different if the treatment is right for them from the start.

To sign, please click the link below and I would really appreciate you sharing it with anyone and everyone you can so that we get as much awareness of this issue as we possibly can!

SIGN PETITION!

 

Please also me my other post Eating Disorder Treatment Needs To Listen To The Patients

 

 

13 replies on “#ChangeEDTreatment Petition”

[…] Well, I have got an awful lot to say, so beware!! I am 46 and have had an eating disorder since age 24. My inpatient treatment started last year, in May, in a hospital in the UK.  So much of the experience didn’t help that I don’t know where to start!! Firstly, though, the staff were great.  There are just not enough staff (that’s the NHS for you). I was there for five months from NG tube / 1-1 observations / collapsing / wheelchair etc to the BMI needed for discharge.  I HATE the issue of BMI but that is another story! Ok, I am having a ‘100% honesty’ moment, so this will come at you in no particular order and be more of a brainstorm… I was getting through recovery in the hospital and still had my depression and anxiety and suicidal thoughts and I kept asking, ‘can my mental health care co-ordinator come to our meetings?’.   I knew I would need her when I left.  She never did. I said I would ring her myself  – they said no, that they would.  Still nothing. So, I called her myself – all she offered was meds, which the hospital would not give me. In hospital, I obviously had to start eating – no choice.  But as I started to get better, I felt hungry.  It got to the point that in the evening I was filling up on cups of tea to help my tum because that’s all we had access to. So, I asked to see the dietician, asking if I could be allowed more food during the day cos filling myself up with drinks was ‘old behaviour’ and I couldn’t sleep well cos my tummy was rumbling and hurting.  She said I wasn’t hungry at night – I was bored.  I said I’m hungry!! Eventually, she allowed me one extra apple per day… that’s not right!!  I was still underweight and asking for food! Luckily, by now I had got to the stage of making my own porridge and (I did admit it) I weighed out more than was ‘allowed’.  I told the staff this and they were great and ‘let it go’ despite being against my meal plan. The staff shortages also meant that the help-care groups stopped and we were only allowed cups of tea on certain days of the week! Treatment sucks. It’s humiliating… you are locked in. When you want the loo after meals you have to have staff in an open doorway.  On one occasion I had an upset stomach and she laughed and said, ‘I bet you feel better now!’. I have now been out of the ward for a year.  One of my friends had been there for 18 months and is still there now!  Two other friends have been re-admitted. One friend from there has relapsed.  I have relapsed. Something needs to change. Follow Claire on Instagram:  @lilyrosie2 (image is Claire with her son!) To read other individual treatment experience stories of eating disorder treatment from around the world, please click here. And if you want to know more about the petition to appeal for changes to the treatment of eating disorders around the world… #ChangeEDTreatment Petition […]

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