Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I recognise the member for Chisholm in raising this important issue in the community. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the two most serious eating disorders and are a blight on the lives of tens of thousands of young Australians. Figures I have seen indicate that anorexia affects two out of every 100 teenage girls and bulimia may affect up to three in every 100 teenage girls. For some it is a death sentence. One in every five anorexics eventually dies because of their disease, yet there is little evidence that conventional treatments actually work.

Some good news is that medical authorities in Sydney have received funding to conduct the world’s first study into the most effective method to treat anorexics, in hospital or as outpatients. The research comes as figures show the number of New South Wales children suffering from the disorder has increased dramatically over the past five years. Doctors at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead have been given $533,000 by the federal government’s National Health and Medical Research Council to lead a three-year trial. The hospital’s eating disorder service, which treats most anorexia cases in New South Wales involving people under 18, recorded a 20 per cent rise in the number of admissions between 2001 and 2006. Most children admitted had malnutrition so severe that they were at grave risk of dying. The number of patients treated by doctors, in and out of hospital, doubled in the same period, although readmission rates dropped. About 45 new patients are admitted to the hospital each year. A similar number of people aged between 15 and 20 are admitted to the psychiatric ward at Westmead Hospital.

The best time to discharge an anorexia patient is a controversial topic among the international medical community, with doctors in the United States and Europe holding vastly different opinions. American patients are hospitalised in general pediatric or medical units for two to three weeks, which is the time it usually takes young people with anorexia to regain a normal heart rate, blood pressure and control over their own temperature. In Europe and Britain, patients are admitted to psychiatric units for up to six months so they can reach a minimum normal weight. Although there are no Australian guidelines, the average length of hospital stays in New South Wales varies between six and eight weeks. Victorian patients tend to be admitted for three to four weeks.

In addressing this serious health issue one initiative is research in programs conducted by two Swedish scientists, Professor Per Sodersten and his partner, Dr Cecilia Bergh, of the Karolinska Institute. These scientists have impressed many with their new treatments. Even a number of Australian families are adamant that the new treatment has saved their daughters’ lives. Sodersten and Bergh’s treatment is based on the notion that eating disorders are not a mental illness—that is, the often bizarre psychiatric symptoms that one sees in anorexics and bulimics, such as overexercising and obsessions about food intake, are a consequence of starvation. It is fundamental to the apparent success of the Swedish treatment that the cause of eating disorders is much simpler: people slide into the disease as they starve and overexercise.

What I find extraordinary about this treatment is that it has its origins in the ruins of war-ravaged Europe. Sixty years ago, allied commanders sent an urgent request for assistance back to the United States. While pushing the Nazis back towards Berlin, they realised they lacked the knowledge necessary to help millions of starving refugees stay alive.

In Australia, treatment is based on the idea that what causes eating disorders is a pre-existing psychiatric illness, such as depression, an obsessive compulsive disorder, trauma suffered after a sexual abuse or some other notion of underlying cause firmly rooted in the 19th century psychoanalytical notions of Sigmund Freud. One of the most prestigious scientific journals, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, recently published a peer reviewed trial of the Swedish treatment, showing 75 per cent of the Karolinska Institute’s patients went into remission after just 12 months of treatment. Only 10 per cent relapsed—a previously unheard of success rate—and none of their patients has died. These success rates demand that Australia take a closer view of the Karolinska Institute’s treatment programs. These results cannot be ignored and Australian families have the right to know that world’s best practice is available to them and their children.

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