Do you or someone you know suffer from an eating disorder? A number of organisations provide specialist advice regarding eating disorders:
– Eating disorder specialist Beat can be contacted at 0808 801 0677
– Family Lives can help families struggling with loved ones suffering from an eating disorder. They can be reached on WhatsApp at 07441 444125
– Young Minds specialises in supporting parents with children’s mental health. They can be contacted at 0808 802 5544.
NHS England also advises speaking to your GP for advice on how to help at home, and that it is helpful for the whole family to be aware of someone’s situation.
GPs can also suggest support groups for parents caring for someone with an eating disorder.
The majority of eating disorder clinics in the UK have treated anorexia and bulimia patients who have used weight-loss injections, research by ITV News suggests.
One clinic revealed 60% of their recent patients have used the jabs.
A woman with anorexia who was repeatedly hospitalised while she was taking the injections has told ITV News it could have been “fatal”.
Florence, whose name we are changing to protect her identity, was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa 4 years ago.
“It’s like being on a rollercoaster and you know the drop is going to happen – having these injections just accelerates that rollercoaster,” said Florence.
As she struggled with her mental and physical health, the promise of “a new miracle cure” felt “impossible to resist”.
Despite being unhealthily underweight, Florence was able to buy weight loss injections from “well-known, respectable” online pharmacies over the course of a year.
“They’re so easily accessible,” Florence told ITV News.
“It can be so quick, it’s delivered to your house the next day, they don’t check any of your doctor’s details. I lost weight very rapidly,” she said.
Florence had to be admitted to hospital several times and at one point, she was so dangerously underweight, medical staff had to insert a feeding tube.
“I was crushed, daily life was impossible,” said Florence.
Before selling weight-loss injections, prescribers are meant to independently verify a person’s weight and height through a video consultation, checking clinical records or by contacting their GP.
“I don’t know how they sleep at night,” Florence told ITV News.
“They need to do further checks. It’s disgusting. Imagine if this was your child.”
ITV News contacted the major providers of eating disorder treatment in the UK – a total of 24 groups with clinics across England, Wales and Northern Ireland – to gauge the scale of the problem.
Of the 14 care providers that responded, 78% said their patients had admitted using weight loss injections over the last year.
Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. So eating disorder experts are concerned about this worrying new trend.
At Banbury Lodge in Oxfordshire, 60% of the people they have treated recently have admitted to misusing weight-loss injections.
Dimitra Theofili, an eating disorder therapist at UK Addiction Treatment Centres (UKAT), said she has even treated teenagers as young as 16 who’ve taken their parents’ weight-loss medications.
“They went home and they opened the fridge and there were diet injections there that the parents were using, which is really scary,” Dimitra told ITV News.
“With the injections, they stop eating completely, so their organs will start failing. They can end up in a much more critical state as a result,” she said.
Kerrie Jones, the CEO and founder of the Orri eating disorder treatment clinic, told ITV News they are seeing cases increase every month.
She recently treated a woman who was using the highest dose of a weight loss drug every week, despite being so “critically underweight” that her partner thought she had a terminal illness.
Kerrie became so concerned about her clients buying the weight-loss injections, she decided to test for herself how accessible they are online.
She told ITV News she managed to purchase several weight-loss injection pens from online pharmacies after entering incorrect information about her weight.
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