‘If You Had an Eating Disorder, Then Why Did You Discharge Yourself From the ED Team?’ - I Feel Like I Was Failed

This was a question left on my most recent Instagram reel where, like in my last blog post, I shared my journey of anorexia recovery. And it’s a very valid question. At first, I wasn’t sure that I was going to answer because I by no means want to encourage other people to do what I did. But then I thought, there is a bigger conversation that needs to be had about the harm that can occur in eating disorder treatment and the impact that a lack of understanding from professionals can have on individuals who are suffering.

So, yes. Last October, after being under the eating disorder team since July, when I was in the depths of anorexia and had just been referred for an inpatient admission to an Eating Disorder Unit (EDU), I discharged myself. But I wish to clarify a few things.

Firstly, I had a private Clinical Psychologist that I saw weekly, as well as a private dietitian I had access to. Secondly, I had very supportive parents who were supervising my meals and snacks every day and they didn’t disagree with my decision. Thirdly, I knew I needed to weight restore and I was going to do whatever it took to see if recovery was worth it. And fourthly, I was open to the Community Mental Health Team, so I had an easy way of being re-referred to the Eating Disorder Team if needed. I am in no way advocating for people to discharge themselves from eating disorder services. I had proper support in place, my GP was asked to monitor my physical health and the option to be re-referred if needed was always there.

So why did I discharge myself?

There were a few reasons.

The first reason was that I saw every weigh in as a competition with myself to lose more weight. Every appointment was an opportunity to ‘prove’ that I had lost more weight. These weigh-in’s were so detrimental and I knew even then that they played a role in my ongoing deterioration. Yes, they say you don’t have to look at the number. But I couldn’t bear the idea of them knowing my weight and me not knowing, and I was weighing myself far too regularly at home anyway. I can’t explain the shift in my brain, but as soon as I knew I didn’t need to be weighed by this team of professionals I didn’t trust, I was able to start following my meal plan. As soon as the focus was shifted away from ‘weight’, I was able to start to weight restore - with great difficulty, obviously, but I was able to follow my meal plan. Now I don’t know what the answer is, because obviously individuals suffering with eating disorders need to have their health monitored, but the focus on weight just reinforced my focus on weight. But I think the other big thing was that I didn’t trust the professionals in my team one single bit, because I still allowed my clinical psychologist to weigh me every few weeks. Reducing the frequency of weigh-ins and having someone I trusted weighing me made such a difference.

The second reason why I discharged myself was distrust. I didn’t trust anyone in my eating disorder team. I received my diagnosis in a letter, which I had to process, and then had no contact for weeks despite the fact I was rapidly losing weight. Despite being told that I needed fortnightly blood tests, they couldn’t offer me an appointment for six weeks due to lack of staff availability over the summer and that was apparently fine until I complained - at which point they sent me to my local hospital for blood tests. Despite being told in my initial assessment that they would look into day patient support, this never materialised and no-one ever followed this up.

I didn’t trust my care co-ordinator, who sat in-front of me on his laptop, typing my answers to the same questions he asked me every appointment - ‘how much are you eating?’, ‘how many calories are you eating in a day?’, ‘how much exercise are you doing?’. They evidently had a standardised form they completed every appointment and I found it incredibly triggering. I wanted to be able to give lower and lower numbers for the calories, and higher numbers for exercise. I did not feel that he showed me any care or compassion, or that we connected on any level. He just wanted to complete his form and that was it. There was no effort to get to know me or who I was, or to try to reduce the stress and anxiety that each appointment caused me. Furthermore, my private clinical psychologist attempted to contact the team on numerous occasions and they never got back to her, despite joined-up care and good communication between different professionals being one of the most important things in ensuring safety in healthcare. A breakdown in communication between healthcare staff has been identified as the most common cause of safety problems (NHS England, 2025).

My distrust grew immensely when I saw the doctor in the team. After meeting me for less than five minutes, she questioned my diagnosis of anorexia that her own team had given me, telling me that there was a difference between disordered eating and eating disorders (how was I meant to feel hearing that when feeling invalid forms such a core part of eating disorders for so many?). She would go on to write in a letter that she felt I met the criteria for EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) rather than Anorexia, outlining precipitating factors of OCD and delusional beliefs (despite the fact that my worries about weight and body image were keeping me unwell, and despite the fact that there are various triggers that can lead to an individual developing Anorexia including being in an ‘energy deficit’ (Dump The Scales, 2025) as I had been in) and advising against giving a “fixed” diagnosis of anorexia, despite my Clinical Psychologist who actually knew me well completely disagreeing with her and despite the fact that I actually did meet the criteria for Anorexia.

In the appointment, this doctor said three things to me which I still can’t believe she said. I wish I had been able to respond to her properly at the time, but I was so shocked and upset that I was left speechless. She said that…

a) People with anorexia don’t generally want to get better - and I did, so therefore it called into question whether it was anorexia. This is just simply untrue. If it were true, then nobody would recover from anorexia and many, many people do. Though that leads me on to her next comment.

b) People with anorexia generally live with anorexia for their whole lives - which is just utterly untrue. According to the NICE Guidelines, which she should have been following as a doctor in the NHS, estimates suggest that 46% of people fully recover, 34% improve partially, and 20% develop chronic anorexia nervosa (NICE, 2024).

c) People with anorexia don’t binge - there is a literal subtype of Anorexia called binge-purge subtype (see the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), which is what my Clinical Psychologist outlined in a letter to her that she believed I met the criteria for.

After that appointment with her, I felt completely misunderstood and uncared for by the whole eating disorder team. I did not feel they understood me at all, and I think that the way I was treated was dangerous. The Dump The Scales campaign published ‘An Inquiry into the Prevention of Eating Disorder Deaths’ in October 2025 which highlighted that “unsafe discharges are still far too common”, that “many people with eating disorders also live with other mental health conditions that increase the risk of serious harm or death”, that “despite this elevated risk, services remain fragmented and poorly coordinated” and that “adults with both autism and eating disorders often fall through service gaps entirely.” I am obviously one of those with comorbid mental health conditions and autism, and the team made no effort to try to get to know me or to individualise my care or get on my level and build therapeutic relationships with me.

I feel like I was failed by the eating disorder team. In the end, it was more harmful for me to stay open to them than it was for me to discharge myself from them, and they allowed me to discharge myself. In their discharge letter, they cited "modest weight restoration” as a reason for allowing this, but I won’t go into what I did to make that number on the scales ever so slightly increase in my desperation so that they would discharge me.

I trusted my Clinical Psychologist and with her and my parents, I was able to weight restore. Unfortunately, when I did, my OCD got worse and I experienced a psychotic episode.

So that is my very long-winded answer of why I discharged myself from the eating disorder team. The harm they caused me can never be undone, and I will never know whether my subsequent OCD and psychotic episode would have been different had I had proper support from the eating disorder team which validated my experiences, built trust with me, monitored my mental health and helped me to see that there was hope - rather than telling me that me wanting to get better meant I didn’t have Anorexia.

There is always hope. There is always hope for recovery. I will never stop shouting about that, regardless of how I was treated and what was said to me.

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