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Liberal slams government's ‘status quo’ approach to eating disorders

Liberal slams government's ‘status quo’ approach to eating disorders

A Liberal MP is expressing disappointment with what she says is the government’s “status quo” approach to dealing with a pressing mental health issue in Canada.

Kirsty Duncan, MP for Etobicoke North and vice chair of the Status of Women committee, tells Yahoo Canada News that Health Minister Rona Ambrose’s response to the Status of Women committee report on an eating disorders study has done nothing to address the concerns the MP has raised.

The Status of Women committee embarked on a study of the situation of eating disorders in Canada in November of 2013. The study saw witnesses ranging from Status of Women and Health Canada representatives, to experts in the field, to individuals with lived experience.

A number of the committee’s witnesses criticized the final report when it was tabled in the House of Commons in the fall for not including recommendations they’d made, such as implementing national standards that would force provinces to reduce wait times for treatment and creating a national database of eating disorders information.

In Ambrose’s official response to the committee report, the minister of health said the federal government recognizes the devastating impacts of eating disorders, particularly on women and girls, and highlighted the government’s support of other jurisdictions in determining how to best address mental illnesses.

“Preventing eating disorders begins with improving mental health. Recognizing that health care delivery is the primary responsibility of provinces and territories, our Government has announced a long-term arrangement that will see transfers reach historic levels of over $40 billion by the end of the decade,” she wrote on Monday.

But Duncan says she was very specific in her dissenting document, attached as an addendum to the main report in the fall, “which chronicled what we heard in committee and what families and medical professionals who have experience in dealing with those with eating disorders believe they need to tackle this issue.”

Instead of addressing those, the minister’s response was formulated in various sections, “none of which specifically address the issues I raised.” Describing the current situation and how it’s “enough” isn’t enough, Duncan suggested.

The Liberal Party’s dissenting report took a harshly critical view of the results of the committee’s study.

Duncan also suggested that final recommendations the committee made to the government were watered down to such a degree that they’re “irrelevant.”

“It is regrettable that, from the very beginning, this study was a political exercise meant to appease a constituency — an effort meant to look like action was being taken,” Duncan wrote.

She tells Yahoo Canada News that the federal government likes to say that health is the jurisdiction of provincial government, but Ottawa has a role to play in terms of funding, and in other ways as well.

“The federal government has the ability to bring the provinces and territories together to discuss and work out solutions and it could do so here,” Duncan says. “I would ask the Minister if she takes the issue of eating disorders so seriously, would she consider putting it on the agenda of the next provincial/territorial and federal government meeting?”

Eating disorders, mainly anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, affect as many as 600,000 to 990,000 Canadians, and about 80 per cent of the these are women. Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate — between 10 and 15 per cent — of any mental illness.

There is a lot that can be done for individuals and their families who are struggling with eating disorders, Duncan says.

But, “if the current situation [was] acceptable, I wouldn’t have families coming to me begging for assistance,” she says.

“I wrote my dissenting report to include some … suggestions [of what can be done] because I wanted families to know they’re not alone, help exists but they have to look for it.”