It was absolutely heartbreaking to hear about Nikki Grahame passing away as a result of anorexia and it was a stark reminder that funding for services is completely inadequate. I shared some of my thoughts here but for now I wanted to reach out to you all directly. 

Following the tragic news this weekend about Nikki Grahame I wanted to reach out to you all to ask for you to copy and paste the below email to send to your local MP (it will literally take max 3 minutes)!

Do feel free to add your own stories and make any changes. (I am sure you know this but please remember to add your name and address so that the MP knows they have to reply). Your MP can be found here https://members.parliament.uk/members/Commons

Many thanks for your support. Together we can end the injustice that people affected by eating disorders are facing!  

Letter to your Local MP 

Dear X,

After the tragic news over the weekend about Nikki Grahame losing her life to anorexia, I had to take a moment today to write to you as my Local MP.  

As you know, eating disorders are a growing problem. However, there is a vicious cycle between the lack of awareness, lack of training, lack of funding, and lack of research. The recent 2019 Health Survey found that 16% of adults aged 16 and over (19% of women and 13% of men) screened positive for a possible eating disorder 

As you are aware over Covid19 the rise in people with eating disorders has been huge with the pandemic having detrimental impacts on those with eating disorders, those in recovery and also in the development of new eating disorders. Right now, the support, treatment and understanding is not out there. On top of this, we have seen some extremely unhealthy messages being pushed through the Government’s obesity strategy. 

I am so pleased that Hope Virgo, Founder of #DumpTheScales, and others have had the time to meet with the Department of Health’s Mental Health Policy team and there is an eagerness from both the policy team and Hope’s steering group to work together but I have my own concerns that issues around eating disorder are still not being seen or tackled as a matter of urgency. I know that these concerns are echoed with Hope Virgo herself and the steering group.

Nikki Grahame’s death is a stark reminder of the current situation for eating disorders across the UK, an illness that has the highest mortality rate out of any psychiatric illness. We must learn from this death, services are underfunded, there is still a huge misunderstanding around eating disorders and also a huge amount of stigma. On top of this there is not enough money going to in to research. We need ring fenced funding and a proper care pathway for people with eating disorders and their carers, or we will keep losing more and more lives.

With the right funding, pathways, training in place eating disorders can be treated.

I urge you to write to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care asking:  

1) What is being done to tackle this?

2) What the time line for implementation of service improvement and funding is?

3) Why he is yet to take time to meet with Hope Virgo and her steering group (made up of experts across the field) to put together a proper timeline for implementation?

If we don’t act now, more and more people will lose their lives.

Hope Virgo is happy for you to contact her directly on hopevirgo@hotmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you