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.

Both sectors are eating disorders. 1 is massively underfunded pre health crisis, during health crisis and after. It’s not ok.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

Exactly this!

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.

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).

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.

There are good treatments for Anorexia however young patients are being turned away and the condition is left to get worse. Some are left on paed wards instead of specialist treatment centres because there are no beds, soon to be less. Some don’t even have access to FBT. Then in adult services the bar is very high and they don’t hold on to you for long

@B00kThi3f I am a compulsive eater, BED sufferer or whatever the term de jour is. I've been this way since a young child. I found the NHS could offer me nothing as regards it.

I went to a support group with BEAT for people with ED. There was a young lady there with such severe anorexia she would walk or run for hours after eating half a biscuit or something like that. Her knees were damaged and she actually needed a knee replacement aged 26. but she had been turned away from our local ED unit because she wasn't in as great a need as others. As for BED, our local ED unit only could take you if you were like 500 pounds. I was at my heaviest about 370. The mental health team assessing me told me I was quite a severe case but not severe enough.

There IS no help available.

What are the good treatments you think form a fair comparison in terms of funding?

Very little funding is going on WLI's, only those at very high risk, with comorbidities, are prescribed WLI on NHS.

If there was an injection, or an easy treatment for ED's you can bet they would be using it. Anorexia etc are very difficult to treat. No funding is lost to those services for WLI I can promise you. Getting psychological help for being overweight is nigh on impossible.

I have been prescribed Mounjaro because the surgery that could fix me isn't an option - if I had it I would cost much MUCH more in medication I would need to stay alive. Mounjaro seems to work and improve my life quite substantially. I also know I am very very lucky to be receiving it on the NHS, especially 'off label'.

All mental health is hideously underfunded. But it's not the fault of the relatively minimal cost of WLI.

The nhs put loads more money into eating disorder teams last year and they took on many more therapists to bring waiting times down. A few of my colleagues left and went and took these jobs and the funding isn't being cut to my knowledge. But yes often the system does fail people I hear you op 🌺

Treatment for anorexia, and all other complex MH conditions, is massively underfunded and in consequence patients have to be extremely unwell to get anything, and that anything may well not be nearly enough. Because the treatments are long term, costly, and have no immediate cost savings for the NHS. We know. That's not the fault of obesity patients. Your anger is misplaced.

OP would you agree with the NHS spending money on WLI if doing so saved the NHS money overall? Or not?

I ask because that is the rationale behind who is being given WLI by the NHS as many people have explained. But it sounds like you still don’t agree with WLI being prescribed, and therefore NHS budget saved. So it seems you have a non-financial objection to the NHS prescribing WLI.

Right lets put it another way.

YellowCarDisease is killing thousands of people. They suddenly discover a treatment which could change that and save lots of money.

But RedCarDisease sufferers are up in arms because they aren't getting more of a super expensive treatment and therefore think that YellowCarDisease sufferers shouldn't get access to the new treatment as a result and are squealling 'its not fair'.

Even though, roll out of the new treatment of YellowCarDisease might eventually help to free up budget in the NHS so more is available to help RedCarDisease in the long run.

I'm struggling here.

I'm afraid I'm in agreement with others here that you just don't like obese people and are totally focused with your own issues. You are deliberately trying to make a comparision which is totally disgenous and frankly financially illiterate as an argument. And by all accounts inaccurate to boot.

Its not a good look.

No it doesn't. You just hate fat people because you see them as "opposite" to you/your daughter and your struggles. You don't see obesity as a medical condition, you see it as a moral failing i.e. gluttony for gluttony's sake. As someone up thread said, obese people can just eat less in the same way as your child could just eat more. Not that simple, is it?

There are many, many underfunded NHS services that threaten lives. You are not being singled out in order to fund WLI. There is woefully little support for any mental health condition and this costs lives. There is almost no postpartum support for women and babies. There is barely any help for children with SEND, which has a profound impact on their lives and costs them their independence for life in many cases. The list goes on. And on and on.

You are also very badly informed about the effects and risks of WLI and are spreading misinformation. Have a look at some data. Opinions are not facts, however much you would like the truth to reflect your views.

It sounds like you have an unhealthy obsession with fatter people and you said you formally had an ED and your child currently gas one. Obsession with people who have their own battles isn't helpful and it isn't nice. Refocus your anger.

THIS.

You are conflating two separate issues OP. Why target obese people and not another medical group?

Your use of the word responsibility revealed your utter ignorance regarding obesity.

WL jabs are miles more effective at treating obesity and therefore eliminating the huge array of further issues associated with obesity, than treatment for anorexia.

I'm so sorry for what you are going through but you've really shown your ignorance.

You clearly completely blame obese people for their condition even though it's a disease. Yet you don't feel the same about anorexia. Interesting.

Funding for obesity services (including weight loss jabs) is definitely not the problem and I worry that you have actually undermined your point by phrasing it like this. (Although those jabs being available relatively easily, even if not always legally, is definitely problematic for a lot of people)

I also think, across (especially child and adolescent) mental health services, investing in early intervention (if we could find the money) would save millions, if not billions in the longer term. I know a child (now 19) who was showing early signs of acute anorexia at age 10 and had an incredible short term, fast-track package of therapy, dietetics, family therapy etc for 6 weeks and full recovered.
If I, and many others, had had access to that at 10 it would have saved hundreds of thousands of pounds on decades of in-patient hospital admissions for months and months at a time as well as all the years I wasn't earning and paying taxes. Speedy, short-term early intervention and prevention (like resilience training in schools) saves money long term.