After the recent fashion shows still consisting of some severely underweight looking girls on the catwalk, it has recently been a hot topic in the news about whether a minimum BMI should be introduced for cat walk shows. This raises another issue; is BMI really that important? Is BMI really the ultimate measurement to determine how ill somebody is?
For my GCSE biology coursework we had to pick a health measurement and find out whether it affected someone’s heart rate by doing different experiments with our class mates. I picked BMI for mine as I had often been told how it really did not mean very much (so I figured it would be easy). I’d gone into my coursework knowing what the outcome would be and of course, my experiments proved that BMI really meant nothing. I had used myself in my experiment (I didn’t have many friends willing to take part) and I was the example of an ‘underweight’ BMI and yet I had the highest heart rate of them all when exercise was introduced. My results showed that BMI was not a good indication at all of whether someone was healthy or not, so why could a 15-year-old figure that out but the health system in this country not?
When being diagnosed for an eating disorder, during the initial assessment you are weighed and measured and your BMi is worked out. It is this number which you are then labelled with and essentially told whether you are ill enough for treatment. YOU ARE LITERALLY LABELLED WITH A NUMBER WHICH DETERMINES WHETHER YOU ARE ILL ENOUGH. When I first entered adult mental health services, my BMI was higher when I was first assessed than when I was first offered actual treatment, and do you know why? Because I lost weight whilst I was waiting for the help I so desperately wanted. It wasn’t like I’d been forced to go to the doctors by my mum or my friends, I’d asked to go. I wanted help. When I was first assessed it was pointed out to me how I wasn’t quite in the BMI level she called “dangerously underweight”, I was simply “underweight”. Telling someone with anorexia that is basically like telling your mum she’s your mum but she’s not quite your step-mum. It’s horrible. You’re basically telling someone that they’re not ill enough for treatment because they weigh too much.
One of the major problems with mental illnesses like anorexia and bulimia is that you try to convince yourself that you’re fine and that nothing is wrong. You tell yourself you don’t need help, don’t deserve help, so when this is supported by your psychologists or doctors, what else is there for you to do?
Every six weeks I would have to return to have a “15 minute chat” with a psychologist who would ask me how I was, probably not really listen, weigh me and then tell me which number I was on the waiting list. And let’s not forget the times I would be told how people had gone above me because they were “more severe”. And of course, my anorexia only got worse because that little voice in my head would tell me I wasn’t good enough – but it had evidence now. This went on for nearly 6 months until one day, I finally received a letter offering me the help I needed. But by now I’d become so brow beaten that I didn’t actually want it any more. I simply didn’t feel like I deserved it.
When recovering from an eating disorder you are told not to worry about your weight. Your weight does not matter. Your weight does not equate to your worth as a person. And yet my hope for help to get better was dependant upon my weight?
And don’t get me wrong, this is not a vendetta against the NHS because the treatment I have finally been given has been amazing and my therapist has been my life saver (and I am aware that they are stretched beyond belief). I am not blaming them for my experience, but if the focus for diagnosis and treatment wasn’t so weight-orientated then this would not have occurred. Despite the increase in the number of people seeking help for eating disorders, they are still being told that they need to lose weight so that their BMI is low enough.
EATING DISORDERS ARE MENTAL ILLNESSES, NOT PHYSICAL ONES!!!!!!!!! In the same way that you do not have to look ill to be thin, nor do you have to be thin to be ill. Just like physical illnesses, if treatment was given to those with eating disorders early on, then the possibility of recovery would be greatly increased. Waiting for treatment because “more severe” people were above me meant that I was sucked more and more into my anorexia. Who knows, if it had not happened maybe I would be closer to complete recovery than I am now.
The diary of a mental case 