Woman's Hour - Parenting: Eating Disorders

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

The number of boys receiving treatment for eating disorders has doubled in recent years, according to NHS figures. Since 2012, the number of boys going into hospitals in England, Scotland and Wales increased from 235 to 466. Jenni is joined by Samuel Pollen, author of ‘The Year I Didn’t Eat,’ a teen novel about a boy with anorexia. Samuel had anorexia from age 12. And Dr Sandeep Ranote, Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist at the North West Boroughs Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to talk about why the incidences of boys with eating disorders appear to be rising, the impact of eating disorders on boys and advice for any parent who may be worried about their son.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the podcast for parents for Wednesday the 27th of February. Now, it's not unusual to hear about girls and young women who suffer from an eating disorder, whether it be anorexia or bulimia. It's rare to hear about a boy or a young man. But the number of boys receiving treatment has doubled in recent years Since 2012 the number of boys going to hospital in England, Scotland and Wales increased from 235 to 466

Professor Sandeep Renote is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at North West Burroughs Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and joins us from Salford. Samuel Pollan is the author of The Year I Didn't Eat, a novel for teenagers about a boy with anorexia. Samuel became anorexic when he was 12 but why did he decide to write a novel for other young people? It was something that I wish had existed when I was going through an eating disorder. It can be very hard to relate to a factual story, I think. Certainly when I was going through it, I sort of dismissed any story that was factual as well as someone else. It's not my experience. It's different to me. So by writing a novel, I was able to kind of draw in a range of experiences

and kind of help people understand a little about the thought processes and kind of what you go through. Sandy, what other books would you say might help both parents and young people who might be going through this themselves? Good morning, everyone. And good morning, Sam.

It's really great to meet you. A brilliant book. And what I would say is The power of story is such a powerful resource that we haven't harnessed enough of. So thank you for sharing your story in a book. The article in The Times was fantastic. I hope you don't mind me mentioning a couple of other books that people might find helpful. That's great. Particularly if you're a male or a young male.

So one of them is weight expectations by dave chauna you may have heard of that one um and he also writes about his recovery from anorexia and i think that hope and the story that uh the story of hope for other people and for families and friends and loved ones is so important in terms of how to get help, how to get treatment, how to get support, because it is available. It is out there. One of the things, could I just read one sentence from Weight Expectations, because I think people will find it helpful. When I was going through the anorexia, one of the worst things was that people began to treat me differently, like something fragile that might break at any point.

That was proper isolating. And I think that's really key. This is real illness, and the people who are going through it are still people. They're people, and that's really important. There's another book that's not written by somebody from the UK, but of course that's important because you can get an eating disorder, whoever you are and wherever you are around the UK. But of course, that's important because you can get an eating disorder

whoever you are and wherever you are around the world. It's called The Incredible Jake Parker by Angelo Thomas. So look out for that one as well. Particularly potentially appealing to younger males. Now, Sam, you were 12 when this happened. I know you suffered for two years. How did you realise that you had an eating disorder? Yeah, it's not an easy thing to sort of discover. It kind of builds up over time and then before you know it, it's happening. A kind of strange thing about eating disorders is that you have very rational thoughts and very kind of normal thoughts about it as well as your sort of delusional thoughts that kind of come from the eating disorder. So I sort of kind of normal thoughts about it as well as your sort of delusional thoughts that kind of come from the eating disorder um so I sort of um kind of realized over time as as the behavior sort of built up and as I was confronted with the fact that I'd lost a huge amount of weight and um I

got ill the kind of key moment was um I got the flu and I was um too weak to go into going to the doctors or to go upstairs to go to bed. So we had to have a call-out doctor. And that was the sort of moment where it was like you realised how much had happened. But I mean, you called this book The Year I Didn't Eat, which is a very literal thing to say. Was there a year where you didn't eat? I mean, it's a title that kind of draws people into the idea of this whole year being dominated by food

and that being the thing that Max, the character, thinks about the whole time. No, I was eating, but I was eating less and less as time went on. And how did your parents deal with it? They were, you know, I should say I was 12 years old, so I probably didn't fully understand what they were going through and kind of the conversations they were having. But they were hugely supportive. I think Sandeep mentioned something really important there about treating people differently. What they did that was that ended up being very important for me was carrying

on family routines, carrying on, you know, we still went and visited my grandparents and we still played board games together, such that not every conversation I was having was about my food, about my weight. And that kind of, because habits are so important to eating disorders, and they're also really important to breaking them. And that idea of having a kind of normal life that I could slip back into, my parents did an amazing job, for which I am very grateful, making that the case. Sandy, this rise in the number of boys being treated and this assumption that we've always had for such a long time that this is only something that affects girls, why are we seeing it now more and more in boys? Great question. Not one that I i'm gonna have an easy answer for

um i think like many things it's a mixture of reasons uh and a mixture of reasons why we're now thankfully um seeing more boys accessing um help support and treatment whereas before we weren't seeing as many and i speak both as a professional and as a parent I have three boys between the ages of 11 and 17 so it's so important to me that you're covering this issue and that people are starting to speak out I think one of the reasons we are seeing more boys is that barriers are being broken down stigma is being reduced people are starting to talk about not just eating disorders, but a whole range of mental health conditions and mental illnesses. There's better awareness, better

screening. And therefore, because of that, it has enabled and empowered young males and boys and families to seek that help, where they may not have done before because of the stigma, because of shame stigma because of shame because it was seen as more acceptable illness for young women and females to have so on one hand it is good that we're seeing more boys accessing help on the other hand we do need to understand better um it's a mix and there are a mixture of reasons why people get eating disorders. That was going to be my next question. What do we know about what causes them? So, one, I mean, it's a mixture of things.

These are neurobiological illnesses. They are real illnesses, just like diabetes, epilepsy and asthma. We know that genetic factors are involved. We know that environmental factors may be involved and social factors. Certain personality types are at a higher risk. Sam mentioned, you know, it's about habits and worrying. So people who are naturally more anxious or worriers or perfectionistic are at a higher risk or more sensitive. We know that we're living in a different time. Our young people today are influenced by

different things to what we may have been 20 and 30 years ago. That said, this is a neurobiological illness. So it's about what increases risks. People talk about social media a lot. And I get asked that question a lot. I'm sure Sam does. We don't have a linkage or a cause. But we know that certainly there is an impact and that for those people at risk of developing an eating disorder, it can exacerbate or make things worse. Equally, there are positives about social media, body image and role models. decades ago to look a certain way and be a certain way, particularly around physical health and exercise and kind of, you know, the perfect body. So there are a mixture of reasons why the pressure boys are under now is different to before.

Sam, your message is to get help as soon as you possibly can. And Max, in the novel, learns about group sessions. What does he learn from that? Yeah, well, he actually learns his own experience, kind of reading about them online, and his own experience is very isolated. I felt that was what I wanted to write about because that was my own experience.

I didn't know other people that were going through eating disorders when I was going through one. But absolutely, that kind of understanding that other people are going through it and have gone through it, I think is a really important thing for people. I know that some people get a lot of succour and comfort from talking to other people who are going through it. And that's become one of the...

Talking about positive sides of social media, that's become much easier to connect with other people who are going through it. And that's become one of the, talking about positive sides of social media, that's become much easier to connect with other people who have had the experience. Sandy, Sam's character lists some horrific things that can go wrong in his body. And we know this is a serious condition which can kill. What would you say to anybody who's listening to this programme who's concerned either about themselves or about their child? What I would say is, lots of what we've said already, is think about if you were worried about your daughter or your son

having diabetes, for instance, what would you do? Do not suffer alone, do not suffer in silence. It's so important to speak to someone you trust to go and access help from your gp or indeed we have a fantastic organizations like beat the national eating disorder association charity that have help lines and support lines that can guide you um and uh guide you to get that early help as soon as possible. We have the NHS websites. The important thing is to speak to somebody. We're doing so much more work with schools

where young people spend most of their time. So you can also access that information and advice through schools. But the key is speak to somebody because you can get help. And Sam, you're much older now obviously how are you around food now um i'm i'm fine around food you know everyone has some um peculiarities around food i think and that's and that's definitely true of me today but um one thing i really wanted to capture in the book is that um and one thing that seemed kind of baffling and so unlikely to me when I was going through an eating disorder is that you could recover completely and have a normal relationship with food where you go out for dinner

and you, you know, you eat whatever you want at home and you don't, you don't really think about it too much day to day. And that's definitely, that's been the case for me nearly two decades now. And I think that's really important. You know, although it's tragically, a lot of people do continue to struggle for years or decades or in their eating disorders don't go away. Lots of people do. And I think that's a really important thing to hear if you're going through it.

I was talking to Sam Pollan and Professor Sandeep Ranaut and we had lots of response from you. Somebody emailed, I have sobbed and agonised many a time when I've heard any programme on Radio 4 about eating disorders and especially regards children as our family have experienced this but in an area we so far haven't heard discussed. Our now nearly 10 year old has an undiagnosed food phobia. He's underweight and to see him naked is agonising. We feel we've exhausted every avenue as he's highly academic and has great energy and is a great sports person. So whoever we've been to, GP, school nurse, counsellor, health visitor. They've deemed him okay, though very slim.

Just to put this in perspective, from weaning at six months, he screamed when he saw the high chair, hated cutlery, couldn't bear food, touching each other. We resorted to baby-led weaning and he would crawl into the room and at one look at the food crawl back out. We couldn't cook anything that smelt strong as he'd get very upset. As lovers of Asian and Indian food this wasn't great for us but even a spaghetti bolognese would upset him. There's a lot of discussion about eating disorders but our son who has a genuine phobia of food, remains unrecognised. And I'm hearing more from parents that their babies or toddlers are going through this whilst all their friends are happily weaning their babies. And it's being missed, so they're feeling like I did. A failure.

Another email said, body functions closed down and he had mental health problems because his mind also didn't work very well. He had good support in Cornwall but he thinks he recovered through mindfulness and taking control of his own recovery. Like many people, the anorexia may have been associated with his need for control, especially after a series of difficult circumstances. And then a tweet, we are five months into the battle with anorexia with a 16-year-old son. Devastating, consuming and exhausted. We're not giving up and live in hope that he will recover.

Facebook support page has been a lifesaver for me as his mum who is full-time caring at the moment. Well, thank you for all your contributions. And if you have any ideas about things you'd like us to discuss in the podcast for parents, you know where to find us. Just send us an email or a tweet. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year,

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