--TRIGGER WARNING--
"I am a parent of a young person who is currently in a mental health facility receiving treatment for her Eating Disorder following 2 suicide attempts and being sectioned under the mental health act. I need you to know how bad things really are.
In the middle of last year we got the devastating news that our daughter (15 years old) had been diagnosed with Anorexia, following a sudden and dramatic change in her attitude, appearance and social withdrawal.
It took 3 (yes THREE) visits to the GP for them to acknowledge that she has a problem that needed to be supported… and when I say supported I of course don’t really feel that this is representative of what happened next. CAHMS were involved to help ‘stabilise’ her eating to make sure she maintained a weight (just about the BMI for Anorexia).
This took place over a year, and we had no idea if this was working or how she was progressing. At home we knew that by our daughter refusing to eat with us, preparing her own meals and eating in another room, followed by a shower she was not getting better.
But the scheming and deceit become worse when during our summer holiday this year things seemed to be improving, we saw our daughter eating a few meals with us as a family, and we also had requests for foods that had not been on her menu for over a year. Surely we moving to a much better and settled place. WRONG…
2 Weeks after our holiday and following our daughters 17 birthday she tried to End her life. The noise/voice in her head had got too much and she decided she could no longer cope with the challenges of everyday, feeling hungry, nobody understood how she felt and nobody could help her .. she asked me when she tried to end her life ‘please daddy let me go’. She shattered my heart, but as a loving parent there was no way I was going to let this horrible disease win. She was taken to hospital in an ambulance to be discharged 2 days later as there was no physical compromise. …1 week later while I was returning from a business trip she tried to end her life again. This time double the dosage for her overdose and was serious that she did not want to be here.
Another trip to hospital and no physical compromise again and they wanted to let her home again. This time we said this was never going to happen. She was in a lot of distress and had stopped eating all together. After 2 weeks in the General Hospital with all nurses fixated on asking ‘would you like something to eat?’, and ‘you know you have to eat something if you want to go home’, a mental health act assessment deemed her unable to make her own decisions. It was determined that she now needed to be moved from the ‘Physical’ hospital to a unit that could cater for her needs. They found her a bed in the nearest facility - over 200 miles away from her home.
So fast forward to today … over 6 weeks later .. and things have been horrendous for us the parents. We are struggling to keep going back up and down the country to see our daughter, she is struggling to cope with her new environment.
Our story is not yet finished, and of course we will continue to fight this horrible disease. We will never give up on our daughter. We are loving parents and will do anything to make this better. Someone please find a way for me to take away my daughters pain and help to heal our family.
Sending love to anyone that is currently going through this horrible illness, and to the families who are supporting their loved ones through the most challenging of times."
Why do I share all of the above? Because this is REAL. Eating disorders are illnesses that are massively misunderstood and it is terrifying the hold that they have over people.
Anorexia has the highest mortality rate out of any mental illness yet we still feel it is okay to judge severity on weight. The government are still not taking this seriously and in the run up to the Election we need to ensure this stays on their agenda!
This story is one of many that I hear every day. And we need to do something to change this. Please sign and share and together we will change this!
It is time to end this heartbreak and this devastation that faces so many each day.