For immediate release
Eating Disorder Awareness Week Highlights Lack of Services
Toronto – Twenty years of working to raise awareness of eating disorders and to get more resources to help people hasn’t led to more than 30 beds across Ontario.
“A make-shift, revolving door measure is all that many individuals who are suffering from eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia have available to them,” says Merryl Bear, director of the National Eating Disorder Information Centre.
As Eating Disorder Awareness Week (5 – 11 February 2006) approaches, over 70 000 Ontarians struggling with an eating disorder, and their family members, wonder how the Ontario Ministry of Health is going to address the increasing pressure to provide more accessible, appropriate and timely help.
In Ontario, there is a serious shortage of all eating disorder services. This, in part, led to the Ontario government paying over $5 million to send residents of Ontario to treatment centres in the USA.
This practice continues even as funding issues force renowned specialist services such as the Toronto General Hospital’s Program for Eating Disorders to periodically close their waiting list, and cut programming.
“The urgency and need of the individuals being treated in the USA is not in question” says Bear, “It’s just that we have home-grown, effective solutions waiting to be appropriately funded before they too collapse.”
“Individuals suffering from an eating disorder are left to flounder like fish on a dock. Their lives are filled with revolving medical emergencies, no employment and having to rely on their families for survival.”
“The devastation to the families is untenable because these systems have let them down,” says a spokesperson from Families and Friends Against Disordered Eating, an Ontario group working to increase awareness and resources to deal with eating disorders.
Hot on the heels of a province-wide grass roots petition for improved services to Minister of Health Smitherman, was pointed questioning in the House of Commons on promises of improved support to local services.
With Eating Disorder Awareness Week around the corner, the National Eating Disorder Information Centre and it’s clients are hoping there will be a helpful response to the over 70 000 Ontarians looking for help.
Backgrounder
Eating Disorder Awareness Week, 5 – 11 February 2006
Goal:
To reduce the prevalence of anorexia, bulimia, dieting and body image problems through a public education program emphasizing social factors causing their development.
Objectives:
- To provide information on eating disorders, dieting and weight preoccupation, emphasizing social factors and dispelling common myths.
- To launch a national media campaign designed to heighten awareness of EDAW and to make connections between eating disorders and body image problems experienced by most women.
- To advocate for widespread changes in social attitudes and gender stereotyping by emphasizing a woman’s identity and personhood rather than external appearance.
- To encourage individuals with eating disorders and their families to acknowledge the problem, to encourage and direct them to appropriate resources, and to provide them with information and support.
- To educate professionals on the importance of primary and secondary prevention, and to provide professional developments for health care workers, counsellors and therapists.
- To make governments aware of the need for additional funding for health promotion, primary prevention and treatment programs.
- To celebrate the diversity of body sizes and shapes of all people.
Cost And Increase In Need For Treatment
- Hospitalizations for eating disorders in general hospitals increased by 34% among girls under the age of 15 and by 29% among 15-24 year olds between 1987 and 2002.
- Cost per treatment day in the USA in 2004 was $2 100 per day, as opposed to $528 at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, and approximately $700 per day at the Toronto General Hospital.
For more information:
Merryl Bear, Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre, (416)340-4188 or merryl.bear@uhn.on.ca