My girl has not eaten for a year but NHS refuses to help
A mother whose anorexic daughter has refused food for a year has criticised the NHS for failing to provide the life-saving treatment she needs.
Emma Duffy: ‘My girl has not eaten for a year but NHS refuses to help’
A mother whose anorexic daughter has refused food for a year has criticised the NHS for failing to provide the life-saving treatment she needs.
Beverley Duffy’s daughter, Emma, who also suffers from borderline personality disorder, relies on liquid nutrition through a tube.
But the 24-year-old has been refused a bed at The Retreat, in York – one of the nation’s only units to treat eating disorders and BPD together – on the grounds her weight is not low enough.
Mrs Duffy, who claims her daughter’s problems began 16 years ago with a throwaway comment from a teacher, said: ‘Since she found out about the refusal she hasn’t eaten anything – not even the liquid nutrients. She has refused to drink and even attempted suicide.’
Now she and the rest of the family, from Chesterfield, are trying to raise £1million to pay for a private bed at the facility.
Mrs Duffy, who estimates her daughter’s weight at about 39kg (6st), added: ‘She’s getting weaker and weaker and she needs help. I hope we can raise the money ourselves before it’s too late.’
3 Comments
CP
Her weight is not low enough to die on the spot, but that doesn’t mean it’s not low enough to need treatment. The complication is that she also has BPD. They will see her as a lost cause. No-one will treat people with BPD and eating disorders, because it is far more difficult to treat than those with just the eating disorder.It will be a total waste of spending a million pounds.BPD isn’t something which will respond to bed rest, an eating plan and talk therapy.She will be fighting everyone else and her weapons are her not eating.She needs an advocate.And it has to be someone unbiased who won’t run away at the first problem, who will really take her seriously and who she inherently trusts.Someone who can make her want to live.
Bon Dobbs
What I find disturbing about this case and any case in which the assumption is that the person is hurting herself, is the reaction of the doctors. There’s no indication that doctors have reacted to her poorly in this case, but, from experience, I know how doctors and nurses in the US react to eating disorders, self injury and suicide attempts. They mark them as a low priority and the patient is judged as crazy. Two excerpts from my book “When Hope is Not Enough” deal with self-injury:
…most people in the medical community – doctors and nurses included – have little or no training in dealing with people who self-injure and, for the most part, feel that they want to deal with other patients first, since the patient caused her own issue. Also, they will likely send the person to the psyche ward, which is usually not effective because the person was using a tool for pain reduction. They’re not crazy, just engaging in a practice that has significant negative consequences…
and
In the hospital, ER doctors take a dim view of those who injure themselves and a person who engages in self-injury often avoid hospitals to avoid the inevitable judgment and lack of compassion these doctors (and nurses) will exhibit toward her. What is important for a loved one to understand is that self-injury has a purpose and that purpose is usually pain relief, not self-punishment or attention-getting. The person who engages in this behavior may feel and describe a deep “itch” inside her body that she has to rid herself of immediately.
CP
Yes. I was told that my weight was way too ‘fat’ for intreatment because I weighed 80 pounds (around 6 stone)and because I was only 5 feet 1″ that meant my BMI was ok. The number of doctors and nurses who have shaken their ignorant heads at me in A&E and walked away laughing or looking to the sky in disgust far outnumbers any rare compassionate ones.
The psyche ward I was in was right next to the only eating disorders inpatient hospital for a radius of about 400 miles, and I watched them walk out in the day time in single file, and I was way skinnier than them. I know they rejected me because I also had BPD and they wrote on my notes “refuses to co-operate, severe self-harm.” It’s a no brainer. The more you hurt yourself the less they care and the less they care the more you hurt yourself.
I knew other patients in the psyche ward who also were on a 3 year waiting list, like me, who were told they’d never get in. So the ones who did must have had money. So Mrs, Duffy,don’t think that your paying a million pounds will help your daughter. Firstly, she will think you only need to reach in your wallets to fix all her problems (and so you’re not really interested in HER), and that you’re asking the outside world for sympathy for yourselves at having a sick daughter, (and then she’ll feel shame.) Secondly, she will then feel obliged to get better as it has cost you all so much money. And the pressure will destroy her with even more guilt.She can’t get better if she’s doing it because it has cost you so much. She will get worse.
Just a note for –
“Mrs Duffy, who claims her daughter’s problems began 16 years ago with a throwaway comment from a teacher, said: ‘Since she found out about the refusal she hasn’t eaten anything – not even the liquid nutrients. She has refused to drink and even attempted suicide.’-
This wasn;t the cause of your daughter’s problems. This was just the trigger. If you want to help you’re going to have to dig way way deeper than that.