Anorexia mother's death might have been avoided, coroner warns, in damning assessment of her care - The Telegraph (UK)An anorexic mother’s death could have been prevented if the NHS had not allowed her to “fall through the net,” a coroner warned yesterday, after hearing that she was left “entirely unmonitored” for several months.
Amanda Bowles, 45, was failed by the doctors before she died at her home in Cambridge, her inquest heard.
Sean Horstead, assistant coroner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, described aspects of Ms Bowles’s care as “disappointing” and “surprising”, noting a "conspicuous lack of safeguarding measures."
He warned of widespread “structural failings” in the monitoring of eating disorder patients which extend across the UK.
So, this is a case that is a hot topic in the UK right now but this is actually a massive issue in the United States. Eating disorders tend to reqiure lengthy residential treatment and often multiple times which may not be covered by private or medicaid. Eating disorders are an extremely complex disorders that often involve personality traits and those issues take a long time to work through. Residential treatment facilities in the US in general tend to be small in numbers and capacity which is part of why you end up seeing prisons used as de facto mental health institutions.
Nonetheless, I cannot imagine having a family member or friend who died because of a lack of access to care. Residential facilities are needed and there is a major gap in the UK, Canada and the United States.