Sizzle important to treat eating disorders

Millie Furse is now 56kg, close to her ideal weight of 62kg. Photo / Greg Bowker

The clinical psychologist designing Auckland's long-awaited residential eating disorders service wants it to have a kitchen located at the heart of the home.

"There is something really important about having a kitchen where patients can see food being cooked," said Chris Thornton, an Australian expert in eating disorders.

One of the residential services he had worked with in Sydney in the Wesley hospital network was an old house with "terrible 1970s decor" but it had a working kitchen.

"One of the kitchen staff would come across. If they cooked sausages, you could hear them sizzling and smell them. I think that was a really important part of the treatment. It gives the message that food doesn't just appear from a hospital kitchen, that there's a process involved."

The Challenge Trust has been awarded a three-year, $8 million contract by the Auckland District Health Board, to provide a residential and day treatment programme for patients 16 and older with a serious eating disorder, from the upper North Island, .

Because of the lack of a residential programme in the upper North Island, more than 20 patients have been sent to Sydney for treatment since 2007.

The Challenge residential facility, expected to open by November, will cater for nine patients from Taupo north, and the day programme, expected to open by October, for 20.

These services complement the Auckland health board's Regional Eating Disorders Service for outpatients and the five-bed inpatient service for children up to the age of 15 at Starship hospital.

Mr Thornton said it was far from ideal to treat patients away from their home country because of the need to involve families and reintegrate recovering patients into their normal home and social environments.

Around 1.7 per cent of New Zealanders have an eating disorder.