So no extra funding for MH conditions or eating disorders just weight loss jabs!

This.

Tou worded it much better than me.
It's a fantastic tool.

I rather feel we can give the OP all the facts and figures, statistical analysis and budget impact models in the world.

but their anger here will not allow any of those pieces of evidence or rationale to change their entrenched position on this.

I’m surprised at how many people resent the fact we can now tackle the obesity crisis. There is another thread where someone feels jealous and cheated as she works hard to be slim, a few others agreed. Now the op resents it, as she wants more money spent on mental health instead. To leave the obese to crack on with it, and the billions in associated costs the nhs pays in line with it.

its met with anger from some, which I find surprising.

Great the weight loss jabs help you have a better attitude towards food to eat better but there is no jab for those who restrict their food.

What is your proposed alternative. We have decades of research showing that no alternative solution exists and all other available methods are routinely failing. As much as people want to believe that maintaining weight is simply the case of eating less and moving more, it is far more complex than that and is linked to many biopsychosocial factors which we simply can't fix easily and cheaply.
What is sticking plaster on the obesity problem is things like controlling advertising and taxing sugar. There is zero evidence that this is having any positive effect. For once, I am delighted to see a research project being funded before rushing into yet another ineffectual policy.

The drugs are expensive right now because they are still under patent. This is what drives the development of new treatments. The companies developing them require patent protection in order to actually make a profit and make their research worthwhile.

The patents are time limited and will expire, at which point the drugs become generic, and should be much cheaper. This is why Ibuprofen used to cost a fortune when it first launched but can be bought for literal pennies now in highstreet shops.

You can't make any claims about cost in any case until you know scale and qualifiers. This is still years away, even if it is adopted as policy, which I'm sceptical about if I'm honest.

Going solely down the MH treatment route doesn't have the same cost/savings benefit. Also providing the MH support, without fixing the society wide issues surrounding obesity won't work.

It would be a case of chucking money down a bottomless pit, unless it's coupled with a complete overhaul of our food and drink laws. There simply isn't the public backing for those reforms.

You’re right in that mental health services should be improved, but across the board, to people with eating disorders, obesity, anxiety, neurodivergence etc.

But that isn’t going to happen soon so I think a trial of 3000 people seems a reasonable idea. I think helping people to lose weight and find employment would be a boost to their mental health and would perhaps be a kickstart to them seeking therapy of some kind.

It will be so much cheaper than treating people for cancer, stroke, diabetes, etc, billions.

With respect, OP but if there was an injection that could cure mental health issues and/or certain EDs, and they weren’t being funded but the weight loss ones were, then you’d have a point. I don’t think a comparable treatment exists. Also, frankly, treating the underlying MH issues of those of us who suffer with obesity is complex, time-consuming and expensive with limited success. Obesity costs the country billions. We don’t have the luxury of time to try and therapise everyone out of it. The drugs are relatively inexpensive by comparison.

The injections are helping me to get treatment for the disordered eating that led to obesity in the first place. For over thirty years I have struggled and battled against it and no therapy or any treatment has come close to helping. Taking Mounjaro has given my brain the peace it desperately needs and without that awful mental war raging in my head, I have been able to take some meaningful steps towards untangling some of the complicated issues that have got me here over the course of my life. It's not a sticking plaster. It's finally something that actually helps and might just possibly work where nothing else ever has.

At the end of the day it's a trial to determine if a wider rollout would be beneficial.

If the trial doesn't prove there will be a reduction in unemployment and NHS spending (or an increase in tax revenue by increased business output due to fewer sick days), it won't have a wider roll out. The financial benefit will have to outweigh the cost of the jabs and price of administering the policy.

It won't be rolled out if there are not cost savings, so the argument of "why is money going on fatties instead of xyz" is flawed at the most fundamental level.

What about them?

Funding this trial doesn't prevent any of those other things happening. The money for this isn't being diverted away from something else. There is no reason why the government couldn't also fund those things if there was sufficient will.

I doubt that MH conditions are the major underlying driver of obesity. It's usually a combination of eating too much of the wrong thing and moving too little underpinned by economic factors/poverty. I understand your anger re the underfunding of EDs on the NHS but your anger is misplaced.

Where are you getting your information from? Are you claiming that every obese person is overweight because they have a mental health problem?

Obesity causes many things, heart attack, stroke, cancer. My helping people lose weight you free up other nhs resources and beds. As less people will need them, we were at crisis point.

the nhs is only giving it to people with a bmi over 40 and now doing a trial on the unemployed who struggle to get roles due to their weight.

thry aren’t just handing them out like candy, and tackling the obesity crisis is really important. Critical in fact.

yes all areas need funding, including mental health, but the scale of those will be way smaller than the scale of people obese, on expensive medication for co morbidities like blood pressure or diabetes, and using many hospital beds. If you can tackle the obesity crisis it frees up resources for everything else.

this is a positive op.

It's not a sticking plaster

Have you used the jabs?

I've had a terrible relationship with food my whole life
Yoyod from 11st to 19st.

This jab is thw first thing that's ever helped me mentally. It's taken all the pressure and stress around food away.

It's allowing me to LEARN how to eat normally and listen to my body and these months and months of getting into a routine of good food practices without the 'food compulsion' is going to help me succeed when I come off them.

I feel like it's a miracle TBH and nothing else has ever come close intwrms of actual wright loss and helping my brain understand what food should be, nourishment not reward.

MH services needs a huge cash injection, in fact it needs a total overhaul from the ground up. And I don't think the Gov't is going to improve the woeful MH provision in this country.

But I can see the cost vs benefit puzzle that giving these injections to the overweight will bring, but I have concerns about the long term impact. How long will the NHS pay for the injections because as I understand it, once you're on them it's a lifelong commitment as you need a regular maintenance dose. This trial needs to come with education on sensible eating and an exercise regime. Having seen my BIL get weight loss surgery on the NHS, then end up bigger than ever as he never changed his lifestyle I can see this is not as simple as a few months of jabs and job done.

Good point.

Not clear what the connection is between funding weight loss injections and availability of mental health resources. Inpatient beds are scarce. Demand outstrips supply. We also have huge workforce challenges with insufficient qualified staff, recruitment and retention problems. The tiny investment into weight loss jabs is not material or relevant.

I can only assume you're not being sincere or have not given this proper critical analysis.

I’m obese and have an ED. Do you think only skinny people have EDs? Would be worth educating yourself?

Do you think those with obesity don’t have eating disorders?