A TEENAGER who has had anorexia for four years says she feels let down by mental health services.
Ellen Cale was just 14 when she started to exercise obsessively. She stopped eating altogether, and weighed just six stones.
She has been hospitalised three times - including one eight-month admission where she was tube fed a high-calorie meal replacement to help her gain weight.
Ellen turned 18 in October last year, and was discharged from Kendray Hospital last month.
But she says she has been let down by the mental health service, as there was no smooth transition from adolescent to adult mental health services.
Ellen, of Pennine Edge, Crow Edge, said when she first became ill she was fainting and stopped going to school because it needed too much energy.
“Some of it was just teenage pressure. I wanted to be in control of my life, I felt like I wanted to be perfect. I wasn’t overweight but I thought I needed to lose weight.
“I would exercise for up to eight hours a day, I had gym equipment at home and DVDs. It was constant and I wasn’t eating anything. Some days I would burn 2,500 calories, but I was only eating about 400.
“My organs started to struggle.”
Ellen was referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and diagnosed with anorexia.
She could barely get up but she insisted there was nothing wrong with her.
She said: “You tell yourself you will stop at a certain weight, but then you reach it and can lose more. It doesn’t matter what anyone says to you.
“I would shake to burn calories, or stand up instead of sitting down, because it uses more calories.”
Ellen was admitted to a specialist hospital in Manchester in March 2016 where patients must eat food, or are fed a high-calorie meal replacement. She quickly made a pact with the other girls to eat what they needed to get out.
When she was discharged in December 2016, she started exercising and stopped eating and drinking completely.
Her mum Janet contacted CAMHS, only to be told Ellen must eat 400 calories or drink 400ml to keep her going. But Janet couldn’t get Ellen to eat. She contacted 111 and Ellen was admitted to Barnsley Hospital. After six days without food, Ellen was sectioned and sent to Becton Centre for Children and Young People in Sheffield in June 2016. For four months, she had to be restrained four times a day so she could be fed through a tube. For Janet, who was sometimes sitting in the next room, it was horrific.
Eventually, Ellen stopped fighting and came off the feeding tube in February this year.
“I woke up one day and felt really positive and just thought ‘I’m going to eat something’. I’d not eaten sold food for eight months. The nurses were really shocked. I was just fed up of it. I just thought ‘what am I doing? I’m missing out.’”
Because Ellen was eating, she no longer felt in control and started to self harm and take overdoses. She was admitted to hospital several times before being transferred to Kendray Hospital. She continued to eat but felt she wasn’t getting better and was just given lots of medication. And because Ellen was now 18 and an adult, Janet felt she was ignored.
Ellen was discharged in March this year, and took another overdose. She said all she received was a leaflet containing the Samaritans’ phone number.
Thankfully, she is now doing much better, she is still eating and has not self harmed again. But now she is taking so much medication that her prescription costs £50 per week.
“I just thought ‘they are not going to help me, I’m going to have to do it for myself. If I don’t I will die’.
“But I feel like nobody understood, and felt so alone. I can’t afford my medication, but I can’t not take it.
“I feel let down by adult services. I feel like I’ve been dropped and I’m not getting the help I need now.”
