I may as well have just responded with my usual 'I'm fine thank you'

Let us consider just how cruel and misguided it is to base mental health treatment priorities on dire medical state.

"I have just thought about losing weight so that the service is accessible, but I know that it would then be much harder because my head would be more screwed, it'd take longer for any treatment and therefore cost more except they'd probably think a week is enough to make it all okay, but the thing I know most of all is that I'd likely die before I reached the point they'd fund a place at a unit. I just, I know it sounds totally stupid, but I just wish someone could wrap me up and take care of me, tell me what to do, when to do it and make me do it. 

... I've told them how things are, but I may as well have just responded with my usual 'I'm fine thank you', because whatever I say feels like it's written off.”

What those who fund treatment and decide on insurance and treat eating disorders need to know is that this person, like many of my other friends with eating disorders, talk a lot about feeling the only way out is death or getting more ill. THEY WANT HELP. They cannot say this every day to every one, they cannot beg and fundraise and advocate for themselves. THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO.

We know how to fix this. We could treat any degree of eating disorder thinking and behavior as just as deadly and urgent and TREATABLE as a small tumor. We do not wait for a tumor to grow nor do we only take out part of it and hope the person wills the rest away.

We need to fund and supply mental health care at ALL levels, at will, with clinical care that understands that people with eating disorders are not able to and should not have to guide and provide their own care. Basing MENTAL HEALTH care on weight status and not mental status is cruel and ineffective and goes against everything we know about eating disorders.

In other words, the system is "crazy." The system is "disordered." And it is NOT the patient's responsibility or fault or job: it is ours. And we are failing.

"I just wish someone could wrap me up and take care of me, tell me what to do, when to do it and make me do it"

Thank you to my friend who gave me the gift of letting me share their words. I know how many others feel the same way and I'm ashamed we have not fixed the system yet. Treatment shouldn't be based on weight status.