Son may die due to lack of appropriate care, says father

Anorexia case: The Dublin father of a 19-year-old man who suffers from an eating disorder says his son's life may be at risk because of a lack of appropriate treatment in the State.

Mr Paul O'Beirne, a father-of-five, says he has been trying to get proper treatment for his son Neil since he developed bulimia and anorexia nervosa in his mid-teens. However, he insists health authorities are unable to offer anything which will help Neil overcome the disorder.

"The next development could be death. There have been a few close calls. It could be a situation where Neil's kidneys fail, or there is a heart attack," Mr O'Beirne said.

An independent assessment he obtained from a Chicago-based psychologist has suggested a range of treatment options for Neil, who also has Asperger's Syndrome, sometimes described as a mild form of autism.

Mr O'Beirne, however, says his son has been placed in an "inappropriate" psychiatric unit in Tallaght Hospital which has not been meeting his son's needs.

"He has been in a psychiatric unit in Tallaght Hospital since last July, but it's just offering a medical model in the treatment of his condition. Nobody is getting through to what's going on in his head," said Mr O'Beirne, who is from Perrystown.

"At the moment he is just is just sitting around the house. There are no psychiatric nurses available to visit him at home at the moment. He's just lying there," said Mr O'Beirne.

His local health authority, the South-Western Area Health Board, says that, while they cannot comment on individual cases, its treatment plans are designed and delivered on the basis of clinical assessment and best practice. These plans are continually evaluated, a spokesman said.

"The board works with individuals and their families and, alert to the needs of families in their own right, is anxious to work with family members as co-therapists," the health board spokesman said.

"If a family has any concern about a family member's health or well-being, then it is open to them to advise their general practitioner or the board's clinicians, so the individual can be provided with appropriate treatment and/ or admitted to hospital where necessary."

The board says for an individual with a dual diagnosis, where a person may have a mental health illness co-existing with a disability, the mental health services work with disability services to ensure the most appropriate treatment is available.

Mr O'Beirne, whose son's body weight has now dropped to around seven-and-a-half stone, says Neil is not receiving counselling or therapy to tackle his condition. Following private inquiries by Mr O'Beirne and his wife Jackie, Stanford University Hospital in the US has sought Neil's records and they are awaiting a response from the health board.

"Neil has lots of potential. He got five passes in his Leaving Cert. There's a place for him in Bolton Street DIT to do engineering. If he can get over this, the future is very bright for him.

"It's a difficult condition to treat, I accept that. But what he has is not appropriate. He hasn't improved. They don't want to pay for somewhere outside of Ireland. It's getting frightening now."

Anorexia: what is it?

Anorexia nervosa is characterised by an overwhelming drive for thinness and an extreme fear of being fat, writes Dr Muiris Houston. The literal translation from Latin is "nervous loss of appetite". Anorexia nervosa affects up to 1 per cent of young women. The female to male ratio for the condition is 10:1.

In order to diagnose anorexia nervosa a person's body weight must be 15-20 per cent below the expected weight for the individual's age, sex and height. In addition, females with anorexia nervosa do not have periods. There are two types of anorexia nervosa: a "restricting" group who maintain rigid control over their eating and a "bulimic" group who also restrict their food intake but their efforts are interrupted by binges of gross overeating.

Treatment is aimed at restoring healthy weight and normal eating habits as well as the reversal of factors that may have caused the disorder. Outcome is highly variable. About 20 per cent recover completely; 20 per cent remain severely ill and the remainder, while regaining weight, may continue to suffer psychological symptoms.