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

[B00kThi3f]

Anorexia and ED numbers are soaring. My daughter has battled the disease for 6 years. It kills far quicker than obesity and the sooner it is treated the better the outcome. During the last few years I have witnessed so many parents fighting for treatment and now in some severe cases patients are just being given palliative care.

Most areas are now planning cuts to specialist eating disorder services.

The fact we apparantly have ££££ to spend on weight loss jabs when children and young people are essentially being left to die is not ok and highlights a quick fix medicated approach by the NHS as opposed to longer term MH provision.

Mostly treating the conditions arising from it - various cancers and joint issues for example. Type 2 diabetes. All of which will be reduced if we have fewer obese people due to WL medication working. There’ll be more money for EDs (and everything else) with fewer obese people. It’s in your interests to increase the numbers able to get the injections.

Weight loss jags cost on average £175 ISH a month. Even in the small tiny amount of times that the NHS would actually pay for it for someone, surely this is an obvious sound investment.

OP people getting weight loss jabs and people with anorexia aren't enemies. Stop trying to make this about overweight people taking funds from anorexics, it's not true. Even if it was true (it's not) it wouldn't be the patients' fault it's not up to patients how NHS funding is distributed.

There's an unpleasant vein of blaming obese patients for their illness in your posts you might want to think about - people with anorexia are similarly blamed for 'making themselves ill' and I doubt you think that's true so why do you think it's ok to judge obese people the way some others judge anorexics?

Try getting help for a severely unwell bulimic with a healthy BMI, versus an anorexic ( I have family members with many years experience of eating disorders services). It's next to impossible. And that's not anorexic patients fault, is it? Them getting help isn't them getting 'the moon in a stick' (as you said about obese patients) when bulimics get nothing. You are angry clearly but your anger is directed at the wrong target.

Really? You can’t understand that the disease of obesity can cause type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, joint problems, strokes and more. The money isn’t being spent on helping people to lose weight. Do you think the NHS should stop treating fat people with cancer and heart disease? The entire rationale for the new and very limited roll out of Mounjaro is to reduce the burden of obesity-related disease in individuals in the hope of saving the NHS money in the long-term.

So conditions caused by obesity are treated.But no money for conditions arising from EDs- mental health, physical conditions etc

This has been pointed out a few times. It's fallen on deaf ears. The Op has decided who is deserving and undeserving of NHS treatment

They don’t look at an anorexic and say they won’t treat their physical illnesses. If someone who is/has been anorexic breaks a bone due to osteoporosis they don’t refuse to treat it. If they have a heart condition because of anorexia it’s treated, just the same as the (different) heart conditions caused by obesity. Neither get much in the way of mental health help. You know this.

There's a lot of discussion about what above inflation or below inflation increases actually mean but it's not a cut, it's an increase in funding, just not a big enough increase

When I get my 'inflationary pay rise' in my public sector job it's never at the rate of inflation, always significantly below. Do you think I should claim I've had a pay cut? No, because that would make me wrong, and a twat. It's a pay rise, just a small one. Same as the increase in funding for EDs.

Honestly op...this isn't some great government conspiracy whereby they want to congratulate everyone who is overweight by generously funding healthcare services for the obese only.

Oh my god you're actually resentful that people with blown out joints, heart failure, liver disease and cancer are getting treatment because they brought it on themselves

Fuck me you're not ok

Actually if your pay rise is below inflation you aren’t a twat to call it a decrease because it is in real terms and that’s why there’s such a crisis in public sector pay just now.
This increase in funding is above inflation. It’s a real terms increase. Still not enough, but it’s not the same as your example.

It feels like it. The lack of concern re provision for Anorexia and EDs is frankly appalling.

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

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

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

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.

Severe cases of Anorexia are being given palliative care so plenty. If there was adequate funding in the first place instead of cuts this wouldn’t be necessary. There is next to no MH support.

@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.

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.

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

No I’m blaming a system that has nothing but cuts for one sector and the latest expensive treatments for another.

In England alone WL jabs could double the annual NHS prescription budget of £17bn, with a high rate of weight gain when the drug is stopped. And, like pre-existing treatments including bariatric surgery, it has serious side effects.

Where are you getting 17 billion from?

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?

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.

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?