‘We Need Help Before We Get Too Ill’
Health bosses are failing to deal with severely underweight Fifers who are desperate to battle life threatening eating disorders, it has been claimed. The Press can reveal a growing frustration among sufferers, medics and counsellors who feel let down by NHS Fife’s approach to complex conditions such as anorexia and bulimia.
The health board comes under attack for:
- not referring patients sooner to psychiatrists
- allowing weight levels to drop to dangerous lows before hospitalisation
- being unable to offer specialist advice to those in urgent need.
One 28-year-old anorexic was referred for NHS Fife help after developing an eating disorder at the age of 14. At 5ft 7in tall, she has at times weighed as little as four-and-a-half stones. Believing psychologists lacked the specialist knowledge needed to help her recover, she eventually sought private medical care.
She said: “What have NHS Fife services done for me? 0n the whole, made me a very lonely person. As far as I am concerned there is no help for people with eating disorders in Fife.”
Anorexics and bulimics across the region are referred to specialist centres in Edinburgh and Glasgow, including The Priory and Huntercombe Hospital, when their condition is so extreme that psychiatric help alone is no longer considered an option.
Ward manager Anne Marie MacIntyre, of Edinburgh’s Huntercombe, believes the situation is far from ideal. She said: “We’re very busy – the busiest we have ever been. This is the only eating disorder hospital in Scotland. There really aren’t that many facilities.”
NHS Fife is in the process of developing an Anorexia Nervosa Intensive Treatment Team (ANIT) to improve services across the region, which bosses admit are under performing.
Mental health director Stella Clark said: “I do accept that services can be improved and that’s why we have set up this team. It’s amazingly complex – the patients we deal with are complex – but we are determined to do this.”
