Category Archives: anorexia nervosa

Worcestershire leads drive to defuse dementia time bomb

NHS figures show Herefordshire and Worcestershire have some of the highest dementia cases in the UK

The good news is that most of us are living longer.

The not-so-good news is the longer we live, the further we seem to be from meeting the challenges of caring for an ageing population. First came the pensions crisis, and now it’s the dementia time bomb; the long-term residential and nursing care of elderly dementia patients and how we are to pay for it.

The caring services are clearly at risk of becoming victims of their own success. Having extended the length of average life-spans, they now have to meet the growing demands on their resources and expertise.

NHS projections make disturbing reading. Last year, the number of dementia patients, (diagnosed and estimated undiagnosed) in the West Midlands stood at 70,739. By 2021 this number is forecast to reach 90,038.

Parents tell of their grief over 19-year-old who ‘didn’t realise how beautiful she was’

‘Eating disorders take a huge toll on the body over a period of time.’

  • Despite stunning good looks, teenager never believed she was attractive enough for the modelling world
  • She developed anorexia and bulimia at the age of 16 and the illnesses left her too tired to work
  • The model died in her sleep at her grandmother’s house of suspected heart failure

By Andrew Levy

PUBLISHED: 17:20, 30 April 2012 | UPDATED: 01:20, 1 May 2012


At 19, with several teen magazine cover shoots behind her and the prospect of a lucrative modelling career ahead, she appeared to have the world at her feet.

But while to others she seemed a confident and beautiful young woman, Bethaney Wallace was facing a crippling struggle with eating disorders which saw her weight plunge to under 7st – and which finally claimed her life.

Doctors believe that, over the three years since she developed anorexia and bulimia, her condition had weakened her heart and it gave out as she slept.

Bethaney, left at a shoot, was forced to step away from modelling when her illnesses left her too weak to work

Self conscious youth: Bethaney modelled from the age of 12 – but she never saw herself as attractive and was anorexic and bulimic by 16

Yesterday, her father Clive, 47, said: ‘She lost her self-esteem.

‘She would say she was fat but she was so beautiful – she didn’t realise how beautiful she was. She had up days and down days. It was like Jekyll and Hyde.

‘I tried to warn her that her organs would fail but she just said: “Don’t be silly”. If you mentioned food it would start an argument.’ 

Her mother Cathy, 42, added  that she felt helpless because Bethaney couldn’t be persuaded to seek professional advice.

‘It was so hard to get help,’ the housewife said. ‘I went to the doctor’s a few times on my own.

‘I asked them to call her in for something else and then bring up the eating disorder. But Beth was not a child so I could not force her to get help.

All in the Mind Radio 4

In the first programme in a new series, Claudia Hammond asks if anorexia nervosa could be an expression of autism in some people with the eating disorder. Consultant psychiatrist John Morgan at the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders outlines why he is investigating the possible link.