Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

An individual who has concerns about eating disorders should attend his or her general practitioner, GP, in the first instance for primary care screening assessment and examination. The GP may then make recommendations, which may include referral to the secondary care mental health services for full eating disorder assessment.

Nationally, outpatient mental health services for adults presenting with eating disorders are provided by the general adult mental health teams. Similarly, children and adolescents with eating disorders are treated by the child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS, teams. Specialist training in the treatment of eating disorders has been provided to clinicians within those teams as part of the national clinical programme in eating disorders.

Although most people with eating disorders do not require inpatient care, where an individual's needs are more acute, inpatient admission may be required following the recommendation of the consultant psychiatrist or physician. When the risk is primarily physical and the person is in need of physical safety monitoring while re-feeding, admission will be to a HSE acute hospital under the care of a physician or paediatrician. Currently, there are specialist eating disorder services for adults, including inpatient bed provision, at St. Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin, and for children and young people at Linn Dara services also in Dublin.

The HSE is currently developing a clinical programme in eating disorders. The HSE recognises that, although eating disorders are managed and treated by existing mental health services, these services may need support, particularly with high risk, severe and complex presentations. The clinical programme will help to develop greater capacity to manage people with eating disorders in the community to reduce the likelihood of acute hospital treatment.

As part of this programme, a collaborative model of care was formally launched in January 2018. This includes a stepped model of care delivery, a specialist training programme for existing outpatient mental health services, a new dedicated national eating disorder network, specialised inpatient eating disorder programmes within key existing psychiatric units nationally, and additional levels of care provided by the dedicated eating disorder network teams.

When this new collaborative model of care is implemented, there will be a national network of specialist eating disorder community team-based services and access to an enhanced level of special treatment beds. New clinical posts are being developed as part of this clinical programme. Recruitment for these posts will be advanced in 2018.

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