Okay.
We totally support the recommendations put forward by the doctors. As parents we want access to treatment by properly trained professionals in a timely manner.
Creation of group homes, places of safety the same as provided for substance abuse, alcoholism, and drug abuse; there is absolutely nothing like this for eating disorder sufferers.
When it comes to coverage of treatment, medical insurance companies need to step up to the plate and start covering expenses necessary to help all these sufferers and their families. How can $500 on an employee's benefit plan cover anything? Two sessions with a psychologist and it is done. It's almost better to not even start rather than opening a can of worms and leaving it to fester.
Coverage for treatment by psychotherapists, nurse practitioners, and nutritionists who have been helping and working with eating disorder sufferers and whose services are not covered by, in Ontario, OHIP or private insurance companies.
Doctors, GPs, pediatricians, social workers, teachers, police, court staff, any profession dealing on the front lines needs mandatory courses specially focused on eating disorders included in their training.
In closing, allow me to share Amy's words with you. She sent this to my phone on Saturday night:
“You keep saying this time last year I was dying, and although I'm not in the same immediate danger, my head is as ever, if not more, in the deepest darkest rabbit hole. I feel impending doom, the same impending doom I felt when I was alone at my lowest weight and bingeing purging 24/7. It's the sense of profound fear that I'm not going to make it out of this eating disorder. I'm not going to be the one-third that recovers. I may even be in the 20% that die.
“You are changing the ED world in Canada, and perhaps the only reason I ever existed was for you to create colossal change, but what about me now? It will be years before any such dream treatment facility will be brought to fruition in Canada. We all know the system here is heartless and virtually useless. They can check on my weight, and send me back into this world, and then I'm right back where I started as a little girl, scared of life and equally scared of death, scared of the unknown, and aging, and loss, and abandonment.
“There is nowhere to treat chronic eating disorders. There is nowhere to go in the emergency. There are so few who understand. I still wake up dreading the day. How will I get through it? What will I eat or not eat? How will I control myself from eating trigger foods? I can't focus on anything. I can barely read, or write, or find joy in anything because I'm constantly paralyzed with fear and anxiety, consumed with indecision and yearning to be numb.”
As a mom, here I am on behalf of NIED, advocating to make changes and bring public awareness for eating disorders, just as Terry Fox and his mom did for cancer.
Thank you.