The Times
Mental Health
Lucy Holden
Gerry Gajadharsingh writes:
Here at The Health Equation we have a very common saying that is “Everything is about something else”. When I first qualified I hardly ever saw teenagers with eating disorders, now it is relatively common. I think it’s a very complex issue with a variety of factors contributing to the triggers that is provoking this concerning rise in the number of patients diagnosed.
Whilst there may have been a trigger, or more commonly a series of triggers, that set the patient off on their particular eating disorder pathway, it can often become a viscous circle and as with all viscous circles, it can be hard to break initially.
The patient needs understanding and somebody to talk to, sometimes parents may not be the first to recognize their child’s problem and may be too emotionally involved with their children or don’t have the understanding to help their children tackle the issue alone. Early intervention is best although there is a common view that “if we don’t discuss it, it might go away”. Whilst this can sometimes happen, often it does not.
Like all of us, teenagers can be seen as stubborn, sometimes not wishing to discuss it and may say that they don’t have a problem. Denial of their disorder is so common initially. As always, it’s not until we recognise that we have a problem, that we seek help to overcome it.
One of the things that can often help, is to get the patient to recognize that their “eating behavior” is a sign that their stress management strategies need improving and that they need to learn to live with, love and respect themselves, inside and out.
Invariably they compare themselves to others, its human nature. They will have learnt things about eating and food in general, some of them good some not so good, so appropriate dietary education can play a part as well.
As we mature into adults many of us learn to view the world and ourselves as “imperfect” and accept the good and not so good bits.
Charles Darwin said “it is not the strongest species that survive nor the most intelligent but the ones most responsive to change”.
Life constantly changes and we constantly change, learning how to become more resilient and adaptive can help so many health problems, eating disorders being one of them.
“Perfect girl syndrome” is fuelling a sharp rise in eating disorders among high-achieving girls as they strive to be “perfectly” underweight, psychiatrists have warned.
In the past ten years, the number of hospital admissions in England of 14-year-old girls with eating disorders more than quadrupled to 336. There was a further 336 admissions of girls aged 15 in 2014, more than three times as many as in 2004. There are also long waiting lists for treatment.
The Times Time to Mind child mental health campaign, which launched earlier this year, is calling for greater investment in services.
Dr Caz Nahman, a consultant at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said that “hard-working and persistent” girls were most at risk. “We believe that the characteristics that create a high-achieving pupil or athlete predispose to an eating disorder, and there is also something about a semi-starved brain that leads to high levels of focusing on details and increased perfectionism,” she said.
“Very often they try to be the ‘perfect patient’ and even their close friends might not be told about their illness.”