Finding Eating Disorder Treatment for Your Son
As difficult as it is to parent a child with an eating disorder, it becomes an entirely different road with a son who struggles. The idea that the medical professionals directly related to the son, often treat it like a phase, or a different issue (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, etc.), can become maddening. Though you’ve told them repeatedly, “He is afraid of food and eating. I think he has a disorder,” the experience level regarding males who struggle with eating disorders is slim at best (no pun intended).
Finding treatment is difficult, and as a parent, there is an innate desire to “understand,” in order to help. You should NEVER have to understand to get your son examined and assessed for an eating disorder. After multiple visits to her son’s pediatrician, without referral to an eating disorder center, one mother writes the following:
“A few days later my son is distressed. His heart feels strange and he lies on the floor and says he is scared. He admits his eating disorder and wants help. He tries to eat food but it makes him feel worse.
I take him to accident and emergency. He is clearly unwell. He passes out and medical staff appear from every direction. He is given a referral to the eating disorder clinic which specifies he must be seen within four days. But for now, we are sent home.
When the Clinic phones a hospital bed is made available immediately. He will have 24-hour supervision and care. It is very expensive to treat eating disorder patients I am told. I am lucky he is under 18 I am told. We have no treatment available for over 18s I am told. I am rigid with fear. What will happen then?
When I see him he is clearly upset. He tells me they don’t like him because he is a boy. He tells me the person in charge asked him if he had a boyfriend. I say she probably made a mistake. Was used to asking girls that question I say. No he says adamantly. When I said no she said to me “So you’re not gay then”. Males diagnosed with an eating disorder feel shame, not only do they have a stereotypically “female” disorder, they are now assumed to be gay.
My son is not treated like a sick boy, despite being told he is one of the sickest boys they have had here. He is a mental health patient so there is no “poor fella, sorry you are sick”. Eating disorder patients are difficult they say. They are hard work, sneaky and full of tricks to sabotage treatment. They must be watched at all times.
Your child is in the same ward with children who are “legitimately” sick. I know anorexia is a serious disorder, not a choice and deadly at that, however there is an undeniable difference in how my son’s illness is seen by the staff. Pictures of sick, brave children fighting cancer line the walls of the corridors. There are no pictures of sick brave children fighting their eating disorders. I know my child did not choose to be in this state. I know his anorexia descended upon him, took control without invitation. But his disease is seen as self imposed, he is resistant to his treatment, and he is a boy.
Confined to bed and hooked up to heart monitors, now finally begins my son’s road back to health. Food is my child’s medicine and I watch as it becomes apparent that the food entering my child’s mouth brings on suffering that is unimaginable.”
We are trying to shorten the gap between identifying the commencement of any eating disorder for any child/young adult and the proper treatment. For a FREE assessment, please call/text us at (206) 910-8690 or email us at SRO@ScarlettRameyOfficial.com