A government-funded project that promised ground-breaking research into the early detection and treatment of anorexia has been frozen because of the NHS funding crisis.
Ministers awarded the £2 million grant, the first large-scale clinical study on eating disorders, last spring, saying that research was crucial to address a dearth of knowledge about eating disorders.
About one in a hundred teenagers aged 16 to 18 has anorexia - an increase of 40 per cent since 1990.
The cash was given to the Maudsley Hospital in southeast London, in partnership with Beat, the eating disorders charity, and the Institute of Psychiatry. Trials of new treatments and diagnostic techniques were ready to start in hospitals across the county in April.
Yet, financial problems across the NHS have prevented the hospital trusts from supplying the nurses and clinical staff needed to run the project.
With many trusts freezing staff recruitment, existing staff cannot be spared for the research programme.
The Department of Health said that there was no excuse for delay. A spokeswoman said: “Our aim is to ensure that patients and healthcare professionals are able to participate in and benefit from clinical research. There are a number of funding mechanisms in place to support R&D activity in primary care, as well as ad hoc funding mechanisms to address particular local difficulties.”
She said that the parties involved had not alerted the department to problems with this grant.
The multi-strand project plans to come up with new methods of diagnosing eating disorders more swiftly and, crucially, explore new treatments for sufferers who do not respond to current therapies. It also plans to develop and evaluate a web-based self-assessment tool and cognitive behaviour therapy for people with anorexia.
Another strand will examine how mothers with eating disorders can minimise the impact on their children.
Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of Beat, said that she was very frustrated that the project had still not got under way. “The grant was agreed in February and we could have started in April. It is very frustrating that we have lost six months already. Our website gets three million hits a month so we are very eager to discover how the internet can be used in the best way to help to diagnose and treat eating disorders.”
Rosemary Bennett, Social Affairs Correspondent
The Times
