Thousands of adults are waiting an average of five months to get treatment for eating disorders, with one trust experiencing an 18-month backlog.
The figures come from new research by the University of Liverpool, shared exclusively with Sky News.
It found that, across 19 NHS trusts providing community-based treatment for eating disorders, 68% have waiting times exceeding three months.
There is an average wait of five months between referral and treatment.
But the longest waiting time was 18 months at Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust.
Jayya Malhorta has been in and out of treatment for an eating disorder for most of her life.
She developed anorexia nervosa by the age of nine, meaning she spent many years in hospital.
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She told Sky News that this had a “detrimental impact” on every aspect of her life – from education, to relationships with friends and family.
‘Significant delay’
She added: “When accessing treatment for anorexia there has not been a time when I’ve not experienced a significant delay.”
Ms Malhorta is currently waiting for community-based care, a wait that has reached 12 months so far.
Meanwhile, she has been relying on friends and family for support but she is worried that her condition could deteriorate by the time she receives the care she needs.
When patients get early help ‘they get better faster’
Dr Ashish Kumar, vice chair of the faculty of eating disorders at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, told Sky News there is a “real sense of urgency” around improving investment in adult eating disorder services.
When patients get help earlier, “they get better faster”, he said, adding that, without better care, a “whole generation of young adults and adults” could be negatively affected.
Dr Kumar added: “If you do not treat these patients early, their chances of getting better decreases significantly, their chronicity increases.
“Their chance of death changes increases massively as well because eating disorder is a multi-systemic disorder, meaning that it affects a patient’s heart, the brain, the kidneys, the lungs and bones, their fertility.”
Eating disorders cost the economy more than £9bn every year
According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, more funding is desperately needed for eating disorder services in the NHS.
PhD researcher Daniel Bowman at the University of Liverpool said: “We know that eating disorders cost the UK economy over £9bn every single year.
“If this government is serious about reducing costs they need to put forward an invest-to-save model which actually invests in community care, which means that people get care in more of a timely manner and don’t become more acute and put extra pressure on an NHS which is already struggling.”
A government spokesperson said: “Improving eating disorder services is a vital part of our work to bolster mental health services.
“That’s why we are investing almost £1bn in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders, by 2024 and an additional £53m per year in children and young people’s community eating disorder services to increase capacity in the 70 community eating disorder teams.”
