Some of you may know that one year ago today I attended a Parliamentary Debate on eating disorders with Beat, the UK’s leading eating disorder charity.

During this debate, MP Wera Hobhouse shared my story. You can watch the video of this here if you’re interested.

When I look back on the day, I have such mixed feelings. It was overwhelming, humbling and incredibly emotional. Of course it was also exciting – having such important people hearing my experience in the hopes of helping others and being told it was inspiring and powerful was. The media also picked up on the story, and it made a tonne of newspapers and even BBC News! I’ve never received media attention before and of course the novelty was cool.

I was also inundated with support, which was particularly overwhelming. Friends, family, distant aquaintences, some of whom even disclosed their own struggles with eating disorders to me and thanked me for having the courage to speak on their behalf.

But I also heard from a lot of people up and down the country who had or were facing similar battles. Who didn’t neatly fit into the category of ‘underweight’ and were therefore ineligible for treatment.

At the time I was pleased the day raised awareness amongst those in power to change things. Those who could stop someone having the same experience I did. We spoke to many MPs on the day who insisted they had been inspired by the stories shared in the debate, (which also included that of Averil Hart, who died as a result of a lack of appropriate care for her anorexia) and insisted they would escelate what they had heard. I left inspired by the people I had met and hopeful things might slowly start to change.

Shortly after the debate, I received a letter from my MP, Daniel Kawczynski, who I had invited to the debate, but who failed to attend (he claimed to be busy but his social media suggests he wasn’t as he turned up at a set of traffic lights causing issue – with a camera crew – having been alerted to the morning chaos via Twitter). It contained some typical Tory shpeil about how they were meeting targets (even though target waiting times for eating disorder treatment in adults didn’t even exist at the time) and telling me how much money was being given to ‘mental health.’ No reference was made to my experience nor any acknowledgment of how poor care for eating disorders is within my local region. He basically denied any issues and dismissed my story entirely, all while loudly blowing his own trumpet and professing how caring the Tories are.

Okay, so I have a crap local MP, maybe things nationally have got better?

Sadly, this has not been the case. Whilst I acknowledge change takes time, I have seen no actual steps to address the various failings in eating disorder treatment or even any follow-ups to the debate itself. GP’s are still not receiving training, arbitrary BMI restrictions mean there is a real postcode lottery dictating who receives treatment when and people are still being forced to dangerous extremes before they can even receive a diagnosis of an eating disorder before inevitably being plonked on an extortionate waiting list with no support for months on end.

Despite charities like Beat and various campaigners pushing forward, we continue to be met by a brick wall. Our stories are dismissed, minimised, and serious clinical negligence ignored and brushed under the carpet.

So do you know what, now, I look back on that day with anger. Because it was all a load of crap. It was merely MP’s trying score points, secure votes and to be seen to care (aside from Wera herself, who I can assure you has full commitment to addressing the issue). But when it comes to action, nothing.

It would be easy to blame the hospitals and GP’s and CCG’s but really they face the same budget cuts every health provider does and are having to make do. They are being forced to restrict who they can treat to those at imminent risk of losing their life because they simply don’t have enough money to look after anyone else. And that comes from the top.

Those who can change the system continuously refuse to. They ignore preventable deaths, they ignore NICE guidelines and they ignore desperate pleas for better. They leave us alone. They continue to bang on and on about how important mental health is to their party, how they will do more, they post the right things, they wear charity pins, they launch #EveryMindMatters…

Really?

Those with eating disorders remain the unwelcome mentally unwell. Too difficult. Doing it to themselves. Not sick enough. No MBE’s or awards for those of us who dare question the system that fails us every single day. That blames rather than cares. That dismisses and ignores. No mention of eating disorders in any speech. No quirky hashtags. We remain a taboo.

I’m tired of having people message me, 5+ years since my initial experience, and 1 year since the debate, telling me nothing has changed. I have no comforting words or ways to defend our system because I have no faith in it. Not for this. I’m tired of seeing my friends literally disappear before my eyes because they were forced to get sicker and sicker before a doctor would even consider helping them. I’m tired of people being forced into hospitals at death’s door because no one stepped in sooner. I’m tired of GP’s ignoring, invalidating and downright encouraging people to get worse. I’m just tired.

I wrote last year that hearing my story, read by someone else in such a significant moment, awoke something in me. I reconnected with a story I had distanced myself from. Possibly due to the trauma of anorexia, or possibly due to the way anorexia impacted on my brain, I’d almost forgotten how bad things were. I’d glamourised it and sugar-coated it and hearing it told by someone else connected me to some hard truths. It hit me that I could have been one of those people whose life was unnecessarily lost. Who didn’t survive. Who didn’t get to tell their tale so publicly.

And every day since I have felt so much anger at this. Because eating disorders are killing people when they do not need to.

And it has to stop.

And for those who lost their battle, as I said one year ago, I will keep shouting your injustices from the rooftops. Because I can’t let you be forgotten.

Lorna

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