Vulnerable eating disorder patients from England are being sent hundreds of miles from their homes to Scotland for treatment, as the number of available beds south of the border has dropped in two years.
Data from NHS England, which included the financial years 2020-2021, 2021-22 and 2022-23 and up to the end of May 2023, shows that 84 patients were sent from England to Scotland. The total cost of this was almost £9m. In the financial year 2022-23, 29 patients made this trip, costing more than £3.4m. The Guardian spoke to a young woman who had been sent more than 400 miles from Sussex to Glasgow, an eight-hour drive.
While the data provided does not break down where patients were coming from, the Guardian spoke to patients who had travelled hundreds of miles, away from family and friends. They said most of the patients on their ward were from the south of England.
One patient, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was moved from Sussex to Glasgow at the end of 2021 and stayed there for a number of months in 2022.
The 22-year-old had been in her first year at university when she became unwell. “I was not really given much option, but was told there are no beds locally,” she said.
“There were five other patients who were from Sussex, and the majority of patients were English, a few were from Northern Ireland and Wales.”
She said being “that far away from home was very challenging”. She added: “My parents and friends did come and visit me but it was quite a performance to get there.” Shortly after being discharged, she was readmitted closer to home and said that that was a lot “more beneficial”.
Another eating disorder patient, 36, who also asked to be anonymous, said she was moved more than 200 miles from Greater Manchester to Glasgow in July 2022. She suffered from laxative abuse and had been treated in Cheadle but her therapist thought a move to a different unit might help.
“It was quite lonely,” she said. “When I was in Cheadle I was right near my home and family … [in Glasgow] I could not easily go home for the weekend and people could not come and visit me.”
The Liberal Democrat peer Kate Parminter said: “The number of people receiving hospital treatment has risen by 84% since 2016-17. Yet the government is failing to address the woeful shortage of beds for severe cases.
“As someone whose own daughter has been treated for an eating disorder over 100 miles away from our home, I know the challenges of long-term care provided at a distance. No matter how good the care is, it is unacceptable for these distances to be necessary because of insufficient beds.”
Hope Virgo, who campaigns for better help for those who have eating disorders, said: “We have seen people being sent hundreds of miles away from home for years because of a lack of available beds in the UK.”
She added that data showing “the lack of beds” was no surprise but a “harrowing reminder of the lack of support out there”.
A spokesperson for NHS England said mental health services were “committed to ending out-of-area placements for patients as quickly and as safely as possible”. They added that the NHS was on track to increase funding for mental health services by £2.3bn a year, which includes just under £1bn a year to transform community mental health services for adults with severe mental illness.
For more resources, Beat has this directory of eating disorder support services in the UK, and also runs helplines across the four UK nations. The RCP also has helpful resources for children and young people and their families. In the US, more resources are available from the National Eating Disorders Association. In Australia, contact Butterfly.
