"Unpleasant scenes at A&E......" - a post from 8th October 2010 on the ATDT parents' forum.

October 2010 was a pivotal moment in both the CAMHS eating disorder treatment and Ben's attitude towards recovery. But it began badly. One morning the (other) school nurse called me to say that Ben had fainted in the sixth form common room and his pulse was abnormally low (again). There followed a massive battle for me to get Ben to A&E because he refused to go, claiming he had faked the fainting.

Why I hate BMI as an indicator of the severity of an eating disorder - or even that an eating disorder exists in the first place

In my PTSD sessions we are going round and round in (necessary) circles as my head tries to process the issues I was having with CAMHS during the first 7 or 8 months of my son's eating disorder treatment. One of the main pictures I keep getting in my mind is of the CAMHS nurse twiddling her cardboard BMI (Body Mass Index) indicator wheel every week. For CAMHS, as with many medical professionals, BMI is still trusted as an indicator of healthy weight, despite the fact that - at a so-called 'healthy BMI' - an eating disorder can be raging.

Parent support: what helped us and what might help you

The ATDT forum

I've been thinking about the support that was available for parents when my son, Ben, was sick with anorexia - because I, like most parents, was desperate for help even if that help was just a sofa, a cuppa and a friendly ear. I really hope that there is more support these days because parents really shouldn't have to go through this distressing, confusing and life-changing experience alone.

It's approximately 8 years (spring / summer 2009) since Ben first began to display signs that I now know were relatively typical of a male descending into an eating disorder: anorexia, in his case.

Notes from my meeting with CAMHS in September 2010

In September 2010, I requested a private meeting with the CAMHS psychiatrist. It had always been really tricky to pin down members of the CAMHS team outside of Ben's treatment sessions when he wasn't around. Usually it was a case of grabbing them for a few minutes as they were about to dash off. So I went along to this meeting armed with a clear list, agenda-style, of what I needed to talk about. I remember asking the psychiatrist how long we had, expecting her to say 20 or 30 minutes. When she said "an hour" I nearly danced with joy.

"Son back in school but still isolating himself..." - a post from 20th September 2010 on the ATDT parents' forum.

In September 2010, my son Ben went back to school after months of being at home - into the Lower Sixth Form. It wasn't a great success. The eating disorder was still raging. He found it difficult to handle the fact that he was "sitting around doing nothing" (i.e. not burning up so many calories). He found it difficult to integrate back into his friendship group and isolated himself by studying frantically in the library during breaks and free periods.

On top of this he wasn't sleeping. In fact insomnia became a major problem as the constant maths were going round and round inside his head: input, output, input, output. How much exercise would he have to squeeze in to work off whatever he'd eaten that day... And meanwhile, despite promises to hand back control of his food intake to me (constant promises throughout the whole of the summer), CAMHS simply weren't doing this.

"Still can't get son to eat enough..." - a post from 8th September 2010 on the ATDT parents' forum.

The summer of 2010 was a nightmare on so many fronts - and if you drew a straight line on his weight chart from the middle of May to the date I posted the following on the Around The Dinner Table Forum (8th September), you would see a steady drop in weight. With this came a deterioration of mood and behaviours yet CAMHS were insistent that Ben had arrived at a stage where he could manage his own food intake. In fact they were keen for him to do this right from the start.

"Mum hatred, threats to run away, etc" - a post from 3rd August 2010 on the ATDT parents' forum.

The wonderful Charlotte Bevan

Just in case you're wondering who 'Charlotte' is... the mum I refer to in these early Around The Dinner Table Forum posts... she is, or rather was, the most amazing and supportive fellow-mum you could ever imagine. Before she passed away from breast cancer in January 2013, Charlotte Bevan supported many, many families, not just here in the UK but abroad, too. She was almost invariably the mum who popped up first with support, help, advice and a shoulder to cry on whenever new members to the ATDT forum posted for the very first time. She would also call us on the phone whenever we posted up an emergency cry for  help. On top of this Charlotte was constantly advocating for better treatment and a whole range of other things to help families facing an eating disorder. To find out more about Charlotte, click here to go to the post I wrote after hearing about her death, back in January 2013. Meanwhile, below is a post I wrote on the ATDT forum on the 3rd August 2010, during the 'summer from hell'.