The audit, commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership and funded by NHS England, found there were more community teams to support children than there were for adults. On average, adults with eating disorders had to wait twice as long as children for an assessment, and more than 10 times as long for treatment, the report found. The eating disorder charity Beat said the growing disparity between child and adult services was particularly worrying.
I gave a simple answer, that yes, I did think there was overdiagnosis, that too many people were being written off, and too many people weren't getting the support they needed. I was then deluged with messages and emails of both enthusiastic agreement and visceral disagreement including from mental health clinicians on both sides of the argument. One angry patient messaged to say: Far from overdiagnosis, I can't even get an appointment to get a diagnosis.