Canberra finally has a 24/7 residential care clinic for eating disorders

Posted on 22 August, 2024

In Australia, over 1.1 million people are living with an eating disorder. Less than a third of those people receive treatment or support.

But with the opening of Australia’s first publicly run eating disorders residential treatment centre in Coombs, those living with disordered eating in Canberra can now access localised support.

It’s been a long time coming. We’ve previously published pieces from those with lived experiences of eating disorders calling – begging – for eating disorder inpatient treatment in Canberra. Because as people like Molly Saunders and Kate Steen have said so well, it’s life or death.

Starting residential treatments in the coming weeks, the new centre in Coombs is the first government-owned and operated facility of its kind.

Providing 24/7 residential care – including specialist, intensive nutritional, and psychological treatment – the opening is an important milestone for people who face or care for someone with an eating disorder.

For the founder and director of women’s health-care provider Her Matters, founder of GH Nutrition and accredited Dietitian Georgia Houston, not only will the centre provide her clients with additional support, but it will be the safe place that she herself needed as a teenager.

“I wasn’t ‘ill’ enough for hospital or in-patient treatment. Navigating the  services in Canberra was quite overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time,” she says.

Unable to receive in-patient treatment because she didn’t fit the physical indicators needed for hospitalisation, Georgia and her family had to seek treatment outside of Canberra. This experience is also what planted the seed for Her Matters.

“My parents and I were very overwhelmed…I was also very reluctant to get  the help I needed. It’s the nature of the eating disorder beast, you don’t realise how bad it is while you’re in it. I struggled with finding a psychologist and dietitian that I connected with. It was all very clinical and scary for 18-year-old me,” she says.

“We ended up going to Sydney because there just wasn’t anything in Canberra…I always thought when I get better, I’m going to help other young women who are afraid of getting help and remove that stigma of having an eating disorder.”

Complementing other eating disorder services in the Canberra region, including the Eating Disorders Clinical Hub and the early intervention service, Georgia believes the clinic is filling a large gap in treatments and provides much-needed additional support to the families of those battling an eating disorder.

“I am now a dietitian that specialises in eating disorder recovery and up until now, there has been a real gap in eating disorder services in Canberra. We will have clients, like me when I was a teen, who weren’t sick enough for hospitalisation but really needed 24/7 support – and their parents can’t always do that,” she says.

“[Eating disorders] tear families apart. When your child has an eating disorder, it impacts the whole family…I hope it offers some relief for people struggling with eating disorders and their families to get the care that they need and deserve.”

With the average recovery from an eating disorder, taking between one and six years, Dr Jim Hungerford CEO of the Butterfly Foundation says residential treatment in a home-like environment is an essential option to assist in successful recovery for many people.

“It is excellent to see this much-needed addition to the eating disorder supports available in the ACT,” he says.

“We’re excited to see more treatment options expanding across Australia for the more than 1.1 million Australians directly impacted each year.”

David Quilty, ACT Director at Eating Disorder Families Australia, also believes the completion of the Residential Treatment Centre would be warmly welcomed by the families and carers of loved ones with eating disorders. “From day one, Minister Emma Davidson and the Health Directorate have included representatives of eating disorder families and carers in all aspects

of the planning and development of this facility, including the model of care,” he says.

“EDFA looks forward to families and carers being active participants in the vital role of the Residential Treatment Facility and to continue providing our counselling, education and support services to the broader Canberra community.”

With appointments commencing on Monday 26 August and residential treatments beginning in the coming weeks, those looking to use its services will need some form of referral or assessment to access the clinic – for example, stepping up from community-based services or stepping down from a hospital admission – to ensure that clients are properly supported through their recovery journey.

According to the Butterfly Foundation, early detection and support are key, because when treatment is delivered by health professionals, 72 per cent of people can fully recover from their eating disorder.

Both professionally and personally, Georgia is excited to see the clinic open. And hopefully, it offers a bit of respite to those who need it.

“We’re excited, from a private practice point of view. Previously we would write letters to GP’s with urgency for our clients to be admitted to hospital. Our clients would then go to emergency, wait for hours and then not be admitted because they don’t meet the strict criteria. There was nowhere for them to go and private practice treatment wasn’t enough for them,” she says.

“Imagine telling a young girl with an eating disorder she isn’t sick enough…this only adds fuel to the fire. The new facility is a really good avenue where they don’t have to leave Canberra and they don’t have to pay the high costs like other eating disorder facilities around Australia. They can get the support and the treatment that they need.”