Treating eating disorders

“When evi­dence clear­ly shows that ear­ly inter­ven­tion in eat­ing dis­or­ders is cru­cial to revers­ing what can rapid­ly become an endur­ing and debil­i­tat­ing con­di­tion, wait­ing for more than 100 days for treat­ment is very wor­ry­ing,” warns Peter Cur­tis, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Ellern Mede, a Lon­don cen­tre which has one of very few eat­ing dis­or­der spe­cial­ist high-depen­den­cy units in the world.

If eat­ing dis­or­ders are addressed in time, treat­ment out­comes improve and poten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing com­pli­ca­tions affect­ing both phys­i­cal and men­tal health can be pre­vent­ed.

Inci­dence is high­est among teenagers, with many patients eli­gi­ble for NHS Child and Ado­les­cent Men­tal Health Ser­vices. The Depart­ment of Health has set a tar­get to reduce wait­ing times for treat­ment for eat­ing dis­or­ders to four weeks by 2020. Health pol­i­cy is steer­ing providers to out­pa­tient and short­er-term ser­vices for eat­ing dis­or­ders, and pro­vi­sion of care from the inde­pen­dent sec­tor will play an impor­tant role in help­ing to beat this dev­as­tat­ing ill­ness.

The focus of health pol­i­cy is to make treat­ment more acces­si­ble and afford­able through short-term inpa­tient stays, sup­ple­ment­ed by linked out­pa­tient care. By inter­ven­ing ear­li­er in the eat­ing dis­or­der, Ellern Mede’s team of experts believe many more fam­i­lies and their loved ones can be spared a life­time of suf­fer­ing.

Recent inter­na­tion­al research sug­gests that access to spe­cial­ist eat­ing dis­or­der treat­ment with­in the ear­ly months of its onset is like­ly to result in 60 to 80 per cent recov­ery rates.

There is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty that by offer­ing short-term acces­si­ble, afford­able eat­ing dis­or­der treat­ment as soon as it is diag­nosed, we may see a tan­gi­ble improve­ment in recov­ery rates

Ellern Mede is a spe­cial­ist hos­pi­tal that focus­es on pro­vid­ing care for eat­ing dis­or­ders and com­mon­ly relat­ed con­di­tions. The hos­pi­tal cur­rent­ly cares for young peo­ple from any­where in the UK and glob­al­ly.

This May sees the open­ing of Ellern Mede’s new pur­pose-designed hos­pi­tal, Ellern Mede Bar­net. This com­ple­ments its cur­rent pro­vi­sion at Ellern Mede Ridge­way inpa­tient hos­pi­tal and out­pa­tient clin­ics in Harley Street and Wim­pole Street, Lon­don. It also sees the intro­duc­tion of an evi­dence-based fam­i­ly ther­a­py-cen­tred treat­ment mod­el adapt­ed by Ellern Mede for UK pri­vate clients, as well as the launch of a short-term “symp­tom inter­rup­tion” adult bulim­ia inpa­tient pro­gramme.

Afford­abil­i­ty for peo­ple who seek to fund their own treat­ment lies in the time-lim­it­ed nature of Ellern Mede’s treat­ment pro­gramme. Sim­i­lar pro­grammes have been proven to improve sig­nif­i­cant­ly eat­ing dis­or­ders among patients in the Unit­ed States over the past ten years.

“There is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty that by offer­ing short-term acces­si­ble, afford­able eat­ing dis­or­der treat­ment as soon as it is diag­nosed, we may see a tan­gi­ble improve­ment in recov­ery rates,” says Dr Hind Al Khair­ul­la, clin­i­cal direc­tor of Ellern Mede.

“We could see a con­se­quent reduc­tion in both num­bers of patients requir­ing longer-term inpa­tient care and also a reduc­tion in the aver­age length of stay at inpa­tient units. At Ellern Mede, our pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence with recov­ery through inten­sive inter­ven­tions, even for the most seri­ous­ly ill patients, indi­cates that our new out­pa­tient and inpa­tient pro­grammes can make a real dif­fer­ence to recov­ery rates.”

Ellern Mede cur­rent­ly treats more than 100 patients a year in its 26-bed unit at Mill Hill, many of those fund­ed by the NHS. Its expan­sion to out­pa­tient ser­vices and the mod­el of short-term inpa­tient stays at its new unit near­by in Bar­net is expect­ed to increase sig­nif­i­cant­ly the num­ber of patients it treats.

So, will this pri­vate sec­tor-led mod­el prove to be the begin­ning of a solu­tion that the health sec­tor will embrace for the future of eat­ing dis­or­der treat­ment? With as many as 725,000 peo­ple in the UK alone thought to have eat­ing dis­or­ders, which have a high­er mor­tal­i­ty rate than any oth­er men­tal ill­ness, this is some­thing health pro­fes­sion­als will be watch­ing with inter­est.

For more infor­ma­tion on eat­ing dis­or­ders or Ellern Mede please vis­it www.ellernmede.org or call 0203 210 2030