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Eating disorders: The trauma of getting our anorexic daughter to eat
Birmingham Children's Hospital has one of only a few specialist eating disorders units
Jane had reached crisis point in the days running up to her 16-year-old daughter, Lily, being admitted to hospital with anorexia.
"In the end I couldn't manage it. I'd had to leave work. I couldn't do shifts because I was so worried about her safety," she recalls.
Jane had spent months trying to persuade Lily to eat, ever since she began slimming for her school prom and then cutting out all carbohydrates and fat from her diet.
"I had to try and get food down her, but it was incredibly hard. I was fighting to get local treatment and support while trying to stop her from getting thinner and thinner. I was beside myself."
Lily became a patient in the child and adolescent eating disorder unit at Birmingham Children's Hospital, which caters for 12 to 18-year-olds, towards the end of 2011 and stayed for eight months. It is one of only four such NHS units across the UK set up to meet the demand for a specialist in-patient service for young people.
Regain control Jane remembers feeling "quite relieved" on the day she dropped Lily off with a bag containing new pyjamas and comfortable clothes. Lily, she says, was "a bit numb".
All Jane knew was that somebody needed to help her to take care of her daughter. Just 45 minutes' drive away, the Birmingham unit appeared to be the answer.
"When they come to us things are pretty bad," says Dan O'Mara, psychiatric nurse and manager of the eating disorders unit.
"We tell them something has to change quickly."
The aim is to help patients reach a healthy weight and encourage good eating habits.
Most importantly, parents are expected to play a key part in their child's recovery - as The Maudsley Approach to treating eating disorders recommends - so that families can regain control over their lives.
Parents often say that meal times turn into battlegrounds as child and parent fight over how much food is eaten.
The unit gives young patients a clear timetable to follow and, with the support of experienced staff, there is an expectation that they will eat a variety of different foods. Although Lily would eat for the staff at the unit, she would not eat for her mother when she visited, which Jane found distressing.
"I cried in the car after every visit for eight months," she says.
Is anorexia a dangerous disease ? Do you think it can be cured ? Do you believe the disease comes from a desire to lose weight ? Do you think the disease is associated with mental health problems ? What should do of people with such disease?
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In my opinion, anorexia is a very dangerous disease. Moreover, it is almost not curable. Anorexia leads to the destruction of the human body. We lives in the world where a beautiful appearance has great importance. So, many girls try to follow international standards of beauty. Girls imitate of thin models. They torture themselves diets and pills. It is a bad decision.
I think it's silly to keep a diet if you don't haveweighty reasons. People should keep fit but not to jeer at your body. People should eat less if they have problems with health (sometimes disease demand keeping a diet) or have overweight. Keeping a diet can destroy your health or you can die!!! Be careful with diets!!!
As man I say that I don't like girls as thin as top models. And a lot of men think so too. First of all anorexia is a very stupid disease. Women ruin their health theirself. Of corse, some women should lose some weight, but it's necessary to stop on time. To sum up, I'd like to say that do sport is better way to lose weith than diet.
I think that anorexia is one of the worst problems of our society. What is anorexia? Anorexia is the lack of the sense of hunger when a healthy person needs eating. I agree with FoxyT. We are told silly ideals. Very thin models are given to us as an example of an ideal girl. This is really stupid. If everyone look the same, they'll just lost their individuality. If you want to be fit, just do sports.
Do you think the world's standards of beauty should be changed? Do you believe then this disease will disappear? Maybe, the main reason is that girls have complexes because they listen other people's opinions. Maybe they think that it is the most important thing for guys. It is silly.
It seems, we have discussed this topic at the forum. But it is a really serious and important topic. It is rather strange and terrible that girls create disease themselves, purposefully. It is obvious that it is result of diet, but they continue to exhaust themselves. I believe the psyche of these girls is destroyed before the disease, not after. Do you really have such friends ? Do you try to help them ?
I hate this disease... This is the most stupid and the most deadly disease for modern young girls. We are told silly ideals and girls since childhood are growing up with the idea that they have to be skinny. This is silly! This disease has broken many of my friends. And [color=#000000]anorexia[/color] is not only physical disease. It breaks the psyche, completely.
