to think underweight teens are a bigger/more common problem than overweight ones?

[manicinsomniac]

There is so much in the news/media in general about the obesity crisis and the number of obese children and teenagers.

I guess I believe the figures (I mean, I assume they're factual statistics!) but I find it difficult because it's so completely different to the reality I see around me.

My 12 year old year 7 daughter has been underweight and suffering from disordered eating since she was 7. She was diagnosed with anorexia earlier this year. Today we learned that a 13 year old girl in the year above will be leaving the school to go into a residential eating disorder treatment centre. She is anorexic too. A 10 year old boy in my tutor group is currently trying to avoid eating lunch and is already underweight. A 10 year old girl has recently been in counselling due to a fear of eating. There are many other very thin children in the school.

In my daughters year of approx. 45, I would say there are two overweight children and 11 who are thin to the point of it being surprising or noticeable (difficult to say underweight without knowing what's normal for them). For most, I hope it's pre pubescent/natural/the result of being very sporty. But I don't know.

I can count the numbers of visibly overweight children in the school on my fingers and that's in a school of around 350.

I worry that the publicity the obesity crisis is getting is actually starting to drive children the other way. I've had an eating disorder since I was 15 but at 12 I didn't even know what a calorie was and had never considered my body shape. Now we have 7 and 8 year olds learning about what foods they should 'rarely eat' and 10 year olds worrying about getting weighed. It feels counter productive and disturbing to me. AIBU?

it's not exactly overfunded is it, at my daughter's nhs unit there were ten children's beds taking patients from six counties with one day patient place (Herts, Norfolk, suffolk, Northamptonshire, Cambs, essex) now there are 14 beds (Phoenix centre, Ida Darwin nr Cambridge)

the children (in words of the consultant at the time) were almost all at death's door by the time they arrived

there's the cost of general hospital too though, even without being ridiculously underweight my daughter was dangerously ill with hypokalemia etc and needed lots of treatment before she could enter ED unit

my cousin died very suddenly 3 yrs ago at a healthy weight, of complications arising directly from her ED after years of partial recovery, I hate the whole 'it's a lifestyle' thing

TalkinPeace
nags
food is the symptom, not the cause

I think that's rather simplistic. How many cases of anorexia start off with dieting to lose a few pounds? Why is anorexia so complex to treat? Food is clearly more than just a vehicle for anorexics.

one interesting point is that anorexia gets a very high proportion of the teenage MH budget, because the parents of the children are often articulate, affluent and well informed and the cause

Evidence please. Like others, my impression has always been that treatment for anorexia is hugely underfunded, and that it's very difficult to get places for treatment at e.g. residential instutions.

Oh no, Poppy - definitely not underfunded! I don't think the country has caught up to what a huge problem it is. More treatment is badly needed. I'm not totally convinced by IP though - my (admittedly outdated) experience as a 16 year old in an adolescent unit and a 19 year old in an adult one is that it was a great place for unhealthy solidarity, competition and habit sharing. I'm still close to people I met there and feel we treated the whole thing as a sort of 'boarding school for the psychologically challenged!' I don't think many made much in the way of progress - weight restoration sure (and obviously that was important in order to continue living!) but most relapsed pretty quickly on release because the underlying causes of the illness weren't addressed. I don't know what the solution to that is though.

The year 5 healthy eating talk is cited by ED specialists as a common trigger for those predisposed to develop an ED. Personally I think weighing children in year 6 alongside SATs pressures is very ill thought out.

Thinking it through, tackling obesity would come under public health budgets, along with healthy eating etc.

Obesity isn't a mental health problem like anorexia, bulimia or compulsive eating.

All adult and child mental health services are underfunded, and I'm not aware of a surplus of EA services.

Obesity is definitely being billed as a moral failing, or a sign of being terribly low class. I hate it.

It's so humiliating to be fat, and looked down on. And that is not the way to inspire weight loss. It's the way to aggravate despondency and comfort eating. And entrench habits.

I loathe everything about how I look, society and myself agree that fat is disgusting, and the kind of person who is stupid and pathetic enough to allow themselves to get fat must just take the hatred that gets thrown at them. It's awful. Especially as I'm fat because Im disabled. But that's no excuse apparently and I walk around in a body labelling me as an immoral stupid lazy fexkless benefit thieving scumbag... That's a very heavy load to carry :(