To think the NHS should not be cutting funding for Anorexia and EDs if they are going to be spending ££££ on weight loss jabs

I have read that diabetes is the most expensive condition for the nhs, so I think that is why they want to find ways of preventing it.

Well, from what I understand, its because WLI are a relatively simple to administer, cost-effective, at-home, proven, effective solution that saves a lot of money in the long term. I don't think they have an equivalent for anorexia. From what I've seen of it in my family, effective treatments that aren't abusive, that are proved to work long term, and that don't involve massively expensive inpatient stays are....well, excuse the term of phrase but, rather thin on the ground. I've actually heard it from a doctor that we really don't have much to offer that is safe, proven, effective, and humane. Not because we can't afford to but because....well, its in the brain, isn't it? We don't even know if or how antidepressants work. Obesity is a physical condition, and a common one at that, for which science seems to have found an effective treatment. Its going to be funded from completely different allocations.

(disclaimer I do not have either of these conditions, but I have relatives who do).

If the injections are rolled out, it's because they meet the cost-benefit criteria. So they'll be prescribed if the cost of providing the drugs reduces the overall cost of obesity to the health service. The goal is to save money, not spend it.

At the moment, as you have been told repeatedly, these injections are not available on the NHS to more than a handful of patients. Almost everyone taking them is paying for them privately. The NHS is not currently spending a lot of money on Ozempic or Mounjaro. The proposed rollout is supposed to take about twelve years, so it's a long time until these will be widely prescribed. It will only happen if it's deemed to save the NHS money overall.

I absolutely believe you that there is a shocking lack of provision for sufferers of anorexia and other eating disorders. Please do posters the courtesy of accepting that there is also currently very little NHS provision to help obese patients to lose weight right now.

The fact that a revolutionary new treatment has been developed to treat obesity has not come at the expense of anorexia sufferers, and it's not being provided on the NHS except in a few extreme cases.

Exactly this!

‘Could’ but won’t because Mounjaro is only going to be offered to a tiny percentage of people with obesity, and they have to have at least one serious weight-related condition on top. Weight loss injections (which haven’t even been rolled out yet) are not the cause of cause of inadequate treatment for eating disorders, any more than they are to blame for long waiting lists for autism diagnoses or knee ops.

OP have you any experience of trying to get healthcare for any chronic complex illness other than anorexia? They're all massively underfunded. This isn't unique to anorexia care, it isn't new, and it isn't the fault of obese people. Your anger is misplaced.

Obesity isn't an eating disorder. You keep describing it as such. But if it was, IF it was, why would you be upset that sufferers are getting treatment? Why would it be unfair if (as you interpret it) one group of ED sufferers is getting the help that another group isn't? Shouldn't all ED sufferers have the same right to treatment? But you want people you perceive to have the 'wrong kind' of ED to have treatment taken away and given to those with the 'right kind'. You have extremely anorexic thought processes.

In any case, obesity isn't an ED. It's a disease, that may be caused by an ED but may also not be.

I'm pretty sure that if a weekly injection could be invented that quietened down the anorexic narrative, gave sufferers the desire and ability to eat well and had positive effects upon other areas of compulsive or avoidant behaviour, meaning they are less likely to end up with heart failure, osteoporosis, infertility, late miscarriage or premature death by all causes including by their own act, you'd be absolutely delighted and happy for your DD to take it potentially for the rest of her (considerably longer expectancy as a direct result) life or at least until there's time for other treatments and methodologies are able to have a lasting effect on the sufferers.

Hopefully, the knowledge about being able to switch the desire/compulsion off can be used to develop medications that can switch it on. But there needs to be a huge body of research and data obtained through adults (and first those with obesity) before anything could ever go near children with AN. And so those obese people paying for their medications and occasionally getting them for a lower cost through Tier 3 weightloss services would potentially making it possible for adults and children to escape the harms of AN, Bulimia, Diabulimia and maybe even ARFID.

Every person using these injections is providing data which could be the thing that leads to a way to hold AN and other EDs at bay indefinitely.

There is next to no MH support for anyone. The chronic underfunding of MH services is not the fault of obese people, nor is funding being taken from MH services to fund obesity treatments. You seem to be finding that hard to grasp.

If this was true...why do you think that is? Do you think it's a conspiracy whereby people are being rewarded for being overweight?

Almost nobody gets any treatment at all for obesity. What do you mean ‘could double’ the cost? Do you mean if every obese person gets them? Even then you could take off the cost all the money currently spent on the consequences of obesity, but that isn’t going to happen. There are very strict rules for prescribing WLI. Most of those having them pay privately as you’ve been told loads of times.
We are all agreeing ED treatment needs more funding. It’s not the fault of obese people and their ‘latest expensive treatments’ though. If they came up with an injection which made it easier for anorexics to reach a healthy weight, wouldn’t you want as many as possible to be prescribed it?

It's not going on treating the obesity. It's going on treating liver disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, orthopedic surgeries etc. The only way to decrease budgets in those departments is by preventing people needing these services to begin with. And the way to do that is by providing cheap and effective solution to weight loss.
When people stop putting these services under pressure, there will likely be more money in the overall pot which can be allowed cated elsewhere. Surely, you understand this.

Why are you so focused on treatment for overweight people. There are other sectors in the NHS you could discuss...how about money spent on IVF? Are you angry about that...? Drug addiction? Smokers? Alcoholics?

To me it just comes across that you are incredibly judgemental and disgusted by overweight people?

Where are you getting 17 billion from?

OP, the money spent by the NHS on obesity is overwhelmingly spent on the consequences, not on the obesity itself. In the same way that the NHS spends money on consequences of anorexia eg osteoporosis.

I don't know what you think obese people are getting offered - whenever I have asked my GP I just get blank looks and diet sheets. (Obviously, as an ex-anorexic I do not need the diet sheets - there is no weight loss tactic I am not expert in). I have not asked for or sought WLI - I suspect these are a bad idea for ex-anorexics.

Back in my skinny days I used to attend a support group for people with ED. Disastrous dynamics. There was a clear status hierarchy, with anorexics at the top, bulimics in the middle and overeaters far, far down. This wasn't helpful to anyone. You will know that most anorexics who die do so by suicide, usually when regaining weight. I'd suggest this is partly because of the physical discomfort, partly because of the loss of coping strategy, and also because of self-disgust. It really doesn't help anorexics to collude with fear and disgust of fat and fat people.

Back

You seem to think that being treated for cancer is some kind of luxury or privilege if the patient happens to be fat. Anorexic patients will be treated - quite rightly - if they break a bone or have a heart attack. Eating disorders cost the NHS almost £10billion a year. It’s not a competition. The NHS is on its knees thanks to 14 years of underinvestment and poor management. That’s not the fault of people with obesity any more than it’s the fault of people with eating disorders.

@B00kThi3f can you explain why you're enraged at obese people getting funding for treatment, rather than say people who turn up to A&E unnecessarily and cost the NHS money. Or book but don't turn up to GP appointments. Or anyone else who actually does waste NHS resources? Or even some other medical condition that you deem minor or self inflicted that shouldn't have NHS money spent on it, in your opinion? Thanks.

That's not how your posts are coming across.

If you'd ever had engagement with NHS Weight Loss Services, you'd realise there is no special treatment for obese patients. It's a humiliating and patronising process which fails in every level, provides little to no psychological support and culminates in surgery which is potentially life threatening and often leaves the recipients with on-going, life long medical issues. If that money is diverted from surgery to WLI and the requisite dietary and psychological support, it has the potential to transform the Service and lives. The £billions you refer to isn't spent on weight loss treatments, it is spent on treating co-morbidities. This money would not need to be spent if there was an effective treatment for obesity (which there now is - WLI).

Rather than being goady and picking on one group, maybe your time would be better spent lobbying your local NHS Trust and engaging with your MP to try and instigate change and raise awareness.

That may well be the case.... I'm sure it's worth discussing. What you keep doing is putting the blame on people who are overweight or obese. Your posts appear full of judgement as if being overweight is a moral failing

Name one physical condition caused by ED which the NHS refuses to treat?

There’s next to no provision for obesity either though!