"NI Eating disorder & mental health services."

I was suffering an eating disorder last year which nearly killed me and I have dealt with it since I was 13. It was very clear it was anorexia. I had to be hospitalised with a tube for feeding.

I have no complaints about the hospital that I was looked after medically in. They did what they could and they got my physical health up a little.

The problem was the eating disorder services. I had just turned 18 and was being seen by the adult eating disorder service in Omagh, from around summer till October 2023. I will never ever seek their care again.

When I was in hospital I had a very brief interview type thing. I was not made aware that this was going to be any kind of assessment.

It was the day after I had been given a NG tube, I was a low bmi so my mental state was extremely suffering, I was stressed and dissociated. I assumed I would just be meeting them briefly as it was over a zoom call and I thought it was just an introduction, not an assessment.

They asked me about what I’m struggling with, and obviously I have issues outside anorexia so I mainly mentioned those (as my entire life my eating disorder was put above everything else and everything else was ignored). I also thought I’d get another chance to explain that part in more detail.

They ended up diagnosing me with EUPD, which I can see being true. That isn’t my issue.

I was told that I had EUPD and not any eating disorder. Just disordered eating which the definition of that is somebody who has a pattern of some disordered eating, but not to the point it drastically affects your life.

I requested to be seen again, that took a month of persistence to get.

Once I finally got to speak to them again, it was over the phone for around 10 minutes. They seemed so genuinely uninterested and I explained to them that I was terrified of gaining weight and getting fat, that I saw myself apparently bigger than I was, that my whole life revolved around my weight etc. They said something along the lines of (paraphrasing here heavily) that does sound like the symptoms of anorexia but I am not going to change your diagnosis.

And that was that.

I suffered really great distress from this as I was not taken seriously. Eating disorders are often co morbid with personality disorders, yet that was not taken into consideration.

When I finally got access to treatment for my ED (therapy), they then focused it all on my EUPD. I was told by the ED therapist that because I was suicidal, I wasn’t anorexic, and that anorexic people aren’t suicidal? Which according to nearly any source you can find, is untrue. Statistically even it is untrue. They also claimed that the fact I was even seeking help to begin with shows I don’t have anorexia because people who are really anorexic don’t want help (again, paraphrased) which again, is extremely untrue and a dangerous narrative to spread.

I find this was all disgustingly invalidating. They ended up discharging me and I had no help. I actually ended up losing more weight again when they did while I was in a psychiatric hospital. I believe the reason their help wasn’t helping was as they refused to call my issue what it was, they refused to acknowledge my fear of being fat and the fear of food itself, I could beg and begged and it was just all ignored. They brought everything back to my EUPD, when they were not specialised in EUPD and had no right to be constantly bringing it up when I begged them to stop it.

I kind of keep quiet about it because I feel bad like I must’ve done something wrong. But everybody in my life has told me that it was horrible mistreatment.

I don’t want to give names as I don’t think that would be legal. 

Just don’t know what to do except get this off my chest, thank you.