In the News: How Ireland’s eating disorder patients have been forgotten by the health service

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Kitty Holland speaks to Sorcha Pollak about ‘stigma’ that still exists for young people

She warned of the “stigma” that still exists towards young people suffering from eating disorders and said HSE measures to support these patients are “just not enough”.

“We still have parents who are being blamed.... one of the parents was told last week, ‘your daughter was in hospital a month, she should just be eating now’. It doesn’t work like that.”spoke of the implications of making adult patients wards of the court so as to receive naso-gastric feeding, adding that in other common law jurisdictions this type of tube feeding is part of the treatment for severe eating disorders.

Holland described eating disorders as “a misunderstood and complex illness” which requires a “specialised approach” which is not publicly available in Ireland. “It’s an illness and a condition that I think, because it mostly affects women, there’s less attention given to it and less motivation to really try and understand it, which is worrying.”

Holland also reflected on her own battle with the illness in her late teens and early twenties. “It was a way of feeling a sense of control over a life that felt like I had no control over,” she said. “It was my identity. And I didn’t know what life would be like without it.”

 

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