Failure puts eating disorder children at risk of suicide

YOUNG people with eating disorders are at a greater risk of suicide due to a shocking lack of specialist child and adolescent mental health services, Fine Gael’s Dan Neville has warned.

The party’s spokesperson on health and president of the Irish Association of Suicidology said most young people with eating disorders were being admitted to medical wards where staff were neither trained nor supported to treat them.

“The average age of an eating disorder varies from 14, for anorexia, to 17 for bulimia (but) the absence of child and adolescent services results in many young people going untreated, and many others remaining undiagnosed,” he said.