Evidence of meeting #10 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was disorder.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Dan Harris NDP Scarborough Southwest, ON
Thank you very much, Ms. Bear, for being here today.
On Mrs. Truppe's very first question, your first answer was to ask for 10 more minutes on the answer. One of our best-kept secrets in committees is that when witnesses come to testify before the committee, they never get to say everything they want to say. If there's anything you feel that's important to share with the committee, you can certainly contact the clerk and send an email, document, or brief to elaborate further on some of the things you might not get the chance to get into today.
I would certainly encourage as a follow-up when you're asked about best practices, if you know of a list of best practices or somewhere we could go for that, that would be particularly relevant for the committee and its work.
I also appreciate your not wanting to reinvent the wheel, and instead build on the work that has come before. As such, I did want to ask, if we members of Parliament wanted to share with our constituents some of the issues and concerns and information about this disorder, because as you said, a lot of it is about networking and making sure people know, would we be able to go to the website and get a kit or a package or something to share with our constituents? Would there be a leaflet we could print off to put in our offices? Is that information available?
4:20 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
Yes, in fact, we are actually launching a new website, hopefully later today, and all of our material is printable. There is a lot of information. I certainly encourage anyone who finds a gap in our information to please let us know, because we will do our best to fill that gap.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Dan Harris NDP Scarborough Southwest, ON
Excellent.
You mentioned that you partner with many different organizations. Would we, or I personally, be able to get in touch with you later, about getting a list of groups and organizations in my area, that we could work with in helping to inform people about the issue?
4:20 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
We would certainly be very happy to help you.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Dan Harris NDP Scarborough Southwest, ON
Thank you very much.
You also spoke briefly about the fact that eating disorder patients may suffer from other illnesses or disorders. My partner is a social worker at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and works with many clients who have concurrent disorders. Could you elaborate a little bit on what some of the additional challenges are to dealing with something like eating disorders when someone is facing multiple challenges at the same time?
4:20 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
Probably the biggest challenge is that very few treatment facilities will actually work with both of the concurrent issues. If someone, for instance, turns up at a substance abuse treatment program with an eating disorder, the person might be told that they will deal with the substance issue, but for the eating disorder the person will have to go somewhere else. Or if the eating disorder is particularly loud or negatively impacting the person's capacity to work on the substance issue, the person might be told that they're not going to actually treat the person at all, that the person will have to go deal with that first.
It's like a roundabout. It's a revolving door where individuals who are ready for help actually find it exceptionally difficult to get in a door where they are going to be accepted as they are, as whole human beings with multiple difficulties.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Dan Harris NDP Scarborough Southwest, ON
Thank you very much.
Are there other models in other provinces or countries—this would fit into the best practices—that are leaders in tackling anorexia or other eating disorders that you'd be able to share with the committee, that we could reference and learn from?
4:20 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
Certainly the United Kingdom at the government level has done some really interesting work. They currently have a committee looking at best practices around, I think, education and awareness. They also have a best practices treatment schedule, I'd guess you'd call it.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Ms. Bear, thank you very much for sharing your time with us today.
If you wanted to find out how many patients had died due to an eating disorder, where would you go? I mean within Canada.
4:20 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
I would send people to Statistics Canada for those statistics.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
4:25 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
No. I don't believe it's captured. I also think it is complicated by the fact that many individuals with eating disorders die of medical complications that are documented as the cause of death. Also, many individuals with eating disorders commit suicide.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
If Canada had a death registry where you could go to find that information, would that be useful?
4:25 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
I'm one of those people who think the more information we have, the better equipped we are to tackle the issue at hand.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
What do you think should be the minimum standard of care for girls and women with eating disorders? You can take the rest of my time, which is probably three minutes.
4:25 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
I think there needs to be timely, early identification of an eating disorder. It needs to be done in a respectful and collaborative way with the individual and the family members involved in her or his care.
It needs to take into account the complexity of the individual's position in—I want to use the jargon—“social location”, so their socio-economic status and the experience of living in their shoes in Canada. It needs to take into consideration the multiple challenges they might face and to accommodate them. Treatments need to really meet the person where they are and move them forward.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Because I sprang that question on you, I'd like to ask you if you would consider adding to that list that there should be family-based treatments to assist the family as well and treatment options, because not every treatment works for every patient. Would that make sense to add to the list?
4:25 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
Actually, yes, I'd support that.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
4:25 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
Some do. Family-based treatment is the basic model for a hospital such as Southlake in Ontario. The Hospital for Sick Children has family-based treatment. It's currently the model of choice for many hospitals.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
What happens to girls and women who drop out of the in-hospital programs? I assume they don't all stay until the end of the program and get cured. What happens to the ones who drop out? Are they offered options? Do they slip back into their own patterns and symptoms of eating and purging?
4:25 p.m.
Director, National Eating Disorder Information Centre
In the discharge process, I believe every individual would be provided with some alternatives she could follow up. The nature of the illness is such that many individuals with eating disorders don't have the capacity to advocate for themselves and may fall through the cracks.
For young individuals, or those who are closely connected to their families, the outcomes are probably much better, and opportunities to improve quality of life if not to recover fully from the eating disorder are largely enhanced.
