Four-year-olds seek treatment for eating disorders
Marie Campion, who founded and is the director of the Marino Therapy Centre, said the age of presentation was getting younger and demand for services is increasing. She said the youngest cases she had seen were in children aged four and five and the oldest up to 60.
“In a child that young, we would work with the family. It is amazing what can develop at an unconscious level. Young people are absorbing all the negativity around them. They are being taught about food far too early, what is good and what is bad and that is extremely destructive.”
Ms Campion said children in primary school should not be learning about food. She said families are under a lot of pressure and children are being “brought up in anxiety”.
About 30% of the population is reported to suffer from some form of eating distress, but Ms Campion believes the true figure is significantly higher.
People, she said, need to take responsibility for their own recovery and not simply blame the lack of public services, which in any case don’t seem to work.
“The problem is that a lot of the clinic’s clients are people who have been through the public services already, but it is a ‘revolving door’ system that is not working.
“The treatment is very much focused on weight and that is not the answer. We see people who have had a lot of treatment that is not very helpful. The methods of treatment are out of date in this country and the focus is on the physical symptoms. There are three hospital beds for treatment, but we would say too many people are coming out distressed.”
Ms Campion said the HSE does fund people to get treatment, but that is a messy system that needed formalising as some people get it and some do not.
The director of clinical services at another centre, Lois Bridges, said she had about 1,500 requests from people seeking treatment but they could not get funding from the HSE or insurance companies to access treatment.
Teresa Moorhead said thousands of people with eating disorders are being left to fend for themselves as there are limited public services and funding for private care to assist them.
She said, although the HSE did support some people to go private, generally this was only when the person is “really, really sick” and the decision was usually made based on economics.
Ms Moorhead said people’s parents and families would have to learn how to manage the disorder from home due to the lack of funding.
“You can be sure there is someone with an eating disorder getting medical treatment in every hospital in the country.”
