Thursday, 26 May 2022

Eating disorders

Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:30): I am really pleased to see that Minister Merlino has announced more support for Victorians with anorexia nervosa. There is $20 million in new funding, and this new funding includes $500 000 for Eating Disorders Victoria to continue to deliver programs that improve quality of life for clients with an eating disorder and reduce hospital readmission rates. EDV will also use the funding to create a new dedicated program for people with severe and enduring eating disorders who have disengaged from treatment and have extremely poor quality of life, including social isolation. A further $1.5 million was invested across six metro health services to provide specialist mental health clinicians to care for young people with eating disorders.

I was pretty horrified to find out that eating disorders—of course they are a serious mental illness, and that is well known—have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. Many people experiencing an eating disorder suffer from depression and anxiety, with rates for anorexia 32 times higher than the general population. I also want to reflect on this because I used to do ballet. There are many triggers for this. I am not a psychologist, so I am not going to explain how it comes about. But I remember a director of the dance school who had anorexia herself, and unfortunately her not so healthy thinking cascaded down. I remember a dance teacher pointing to students around the room and saying, ‘You need to lose weight. You don’t. You do’. It was humiliating. There is a lot of work to do, but I am very glad that our government is backing it in.