Exclusive: doctors surveyed say young people forced to endure long waits as NHS services overwhelmed
Young people with eating disorders are coming to harm and ending up in A&E because they are being denied care and forced to endure long waits for treatment, GPs have revealed.
The “truly shocking” findings about the help available to young people with often very fragile mental health emerged in a survey of 1,004 family doctors across the UK by the youth mental health charityThe shortage of beds for children and young people with eating disorders is so serious that some are being sent hundreds of miles from home or ending up on adult psychiatric wards,“The provision is awful and I worry my young patients may die,” one GP in the south-east of England told stem4.
A pronounced postcode lottery means that many GPs believe that access to treatment has become impossible or difficult for under-19s with early, less severe physical symptoms. “Young people with complex mental illness such as eating disorders will experience deterioration the longer they are made to wait for treatment, and this is why we are seeing record numbers of young people presenting at A&E”, she added.“People who have eating disorders are at high risk of mortality both due to physical complications and risk of suicide. All young people with poor mental health need treatment early or else their risk increases.
because they were being “repeatedly failed” by a health service that has done too little to tackle the growing problem. Earlier this month the Royal College of Psychiatrists said that eating disorder services in England had been “flooded” with under-18s being referred by GPs since Covid struck in 2020. The number of such patients was 51% higher then pre-pandemic, it found.
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