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Respected Contributor
Posts: 4,373
Registered: ‎04-04-2015

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?


@suzyQ3 wrote:

God help anyone who has to reach 65 pounds to enlist. For many, that would be a death sentence.

 

As to the idea that she has to want treatment, oh please. When in the throes of such a condition, she cannot help herself or make rational decisions. If she in fact allows treatment, that in and of itself is a breakthrough.

 

Anorexia is a partiularly daunting condition to treat. And it is a particularly cruel and consuming one -- often causing extreme ill health and consequently death.


This is why I am wondering why the hospital - where she apparently is "living" due to her life threatening condition - is allowing her to "negotiate" how much she will eat.  Why isn't she on a feeding tube?

Honored Contributor
Posts: 17,739
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?

Can they force someone to be on a feeding tube?

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Posts: 5,892
Registered: ‎03-20-2010

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?


@suzyQ3 wrote:

God help anyone who has to reach 65 pounds to enlist. For many, that would be a death sentence.

 

As to the idea that she has to want treatment, oh please. When in the throes of such a condition, she cannot help herself or make rational decisions. If she in fact allows treatment, that in and of itself is a breakthrough.

 

Anorexia is a partiularly daunting condition to treat. And it is a particularly cruel and consuming one -- often causing extreme ill health and consequently death.


No treatment will work unless you want to get better.  It is often a difficult road and one you must be able to travel.  If forcing people into treatment was the answer then we would not have drug addicts, alcoholics, and eliminate all mental illnesses,  She has been in and out of treatment facilities, they havn't worked up to this point.

Someday, when scientists discover the center of the Universe....some people will be disappointed it is not them.
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Honored Contributor
Posts: 17,739
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?

I saw a film about eating disorders. The lady affected ,wanted to eat ,she just couldn't get it down. They filmed her, while she ate privately, and I could have just wept, to she her struggling trying to make herself eat. I think that it is more complicated that just wanting to eat. I believe this woman , fully  desperately, wanted to be well, but food just revolted her

Respected Contributor
Posts: 4,373
Registered: ‎04-04-2015

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?


@cherry wrote:

Can they force someone to be on a feeding tube?


I don't know.  Either this is a mental condition and she is not competent to refuse medical treatment - or it isn't and she can.

 

She's quoted as saying - "There are so many people like me out there with this disorder.  They could possibly die any day and can't get the help they need."

 

Yet she is refusing food - which would seem to be the primary core of the help she needs (physically at least).  She is not even at the 65 pound weight she needs to be to get into the program she apparently wants.

 

 

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Registered: ‎11-25-2011

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?


@cherry wrote:

Can they force someone to be on a feeding tube?


That’s where, IMO, you kinda enter the ‘Terri Schiavo’ territory

with all the argument & varying degrees of legal action. 

 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 21,733
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?


@CrazyDaisy wrote:

@suzyQ3 wrote:

God help anyone who has to reach 65 pounds to enlist. For many, that would be a death sentence.

 

As to the idea that she has to want treatment, oh please. When in the throes of such a condition, she cannot help herself or make rational decisions. If she in fact allows treatment, that in and of itself is a breakthrough.

 

Anorexia is a partiularly daunting condition to treat. And it is a particularly cruel and consuming one -- often causing extreme ill health and consequently death.


No treatment will work unless you want to get better.  It is often a difficult road and one you must be able to travel.  If forcing people into treatment was the answer then we would not have drug addicts, alcoholics, and eliminate all mental illnesses,  She has been in and out of treatment facilities, they havn't worked up to this point.


@CrazyDaisy, unless she is purposely trying to die, she does want to get better. But that's simply not enough to break through the wall she has constructed. I admit to not having read the article. Apparently, she is in the hopsital? And has been in treatment before?

 

If she should refuse to eat or eat enough for basic survival, I don't know why she wouldn't be treated in any way necessary for her to live. Maybe she would have to go into a coma for that to occur? Maybe someone is her health guardian who can authorize treatment?


~Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Honored Contributor
Posts: 23,835
Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?


@cherry wrote:

I saw a film about eating disorders. The lady affected ,wanted to eat ,she just couldn't get it down. They filmed her, while she ate privately, and I could have just wept, to she her struggling trying to make herself eat. I think that it is more complicated that just wanting to eat. I believe this woman , fully  desperately, wanted to be well, but food just revolted her


@cherry  Just to enlighten you and others here....I was Anorexic for many years in my youth. It has nothing to do with not being able to eat....anorexics are SO HUNGRY but, the FEAR of one calorie...the FEAR of fat is so ingrained in your every waking moment, you CAN NOT put food into to your body.  As an anorexic you think about food all the time....but, you will not allow yourself to eat. Food does not revolt you....it frightens you.

 

And YES, you want to be well.....you want to be normal...but you just CAN'T eat normally like people around you.  It is a very lonely disease. It is as much physical as it is mental.  

 

I must add that unless you understand the illness by living it, you can not fully comprehend  how a person thinks with this illness.  That is why therapy does  not help very many anorexics,  and, why so many die from it.  I was fortunate to be able to come through the illness, but, I had many years of  terrible struggle  and unhappilness during those years.  I call them my lost years. 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 8,955
Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?

As we so often see in posts here and elsewhere about management of personal size, obesity is still typically cosmeticized here in the United States as well as numerous other cosmopolitan centers rather than be regarded as the medical/psychological/physical health related problem that it really is.

 

Too easy to be neglected and/or ignored by insurance providers.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 21,733
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Anorexia treatment a luxury program and insurance refuses to treat it ?


@violann wrote:

As we so often see in posts here and elsewhere about management of personal size, obesity is still typically cosmeticized here in the United States as well as numerous other cosmopolitan centers rather than be regarded as the medical/psychological/physical health related problem that it really is.

 

Too easy to be neglected and/or ignored by insurance providers.


@violann, I'm not at all sure that it's an apple/apple comparison. You cannot cosmeticize anorexia.


~Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland