It took years for Wahgunyah resident Natasha Kirk to be diagnosed, let alone receive any type of assistance for her eating disorder. until it was too late," says Annette, who is now a tireless campaigner for major changes to the country's mental health system. And they didn't know that "the earliest intervention possible" is the key to tackling an eating disorder. They hadn't yet met former Australian of the Year Professor Patrick McGorry, who maintains eating disorders are the hardest mental illness to treat. "We knew nothing and we were not guided we didn't know it's one of the most serious mental illnesses." The Bakers also didn't know at the time that anorexia has the highest rate of suicide of any psychiatric disorder. "There was this focus on food and not anything else," says Annette, who has previously recalled that one insensitive doctor suggested a milkshake and a can of Coke would sort out their daughter. Annette and husband Stuart took morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea to school. In the three years before she died, Mary Baker did not once pick up any food by herself and eat it. Tuesday marked 11 years since 15-year-old Mary took her life. Annette still weeps as she recalls the physical minefield of grappling with Mary's eating disorder when the real battle was being waged in her daughter's mind. "During her first visit, Mary was humiliated we had to give her breakfast and she was forced to eat it in front of all of us," she says.
The Maudsley program - it was "the thing" of that period - was meant to be inclusive of families, Annette says. The 12-year-old spent a week at Albury hospital on a feeding tube before being sent to the Royal Children's for two months and then advised to sign up for a program at Surrey Hills.
She recalls the "torture" of packing their family of five into the car every week for a year to attend an outpatient program at the now-closed Oak House. Annette Baker travelled the highway to hell from Albury to Melbourne over and over again, scrambling to get help for her daughter Mary. Currently the closest treatment available is Melbourne or Geelong. Dr Haines plans to push the federal government for $6 million to fund a specialist treatment and recovery facility on the Border. The former nurse and rural health researcher listened to "heartbreaking" stories from families and individuals with lived experiences and clinicians who spoke of the lack of access to treatment and recovery services for eating disorders in the region. The gaping hole in specialised training on eating disorders for GPs, paediatricians, dieticians, health professionals and teachers was among the issues raised at the March 11 roundtable, organised by Indi MP Helen Haines. "We didn't know anything about it," the doctor admitted during a forum on eating disorder services in the region last week. beyond treating the physical symptoms of a very serious mental illness. Medical staff without the knowledge or training to help. Terrified of the desperate families presenting to the emergency department in great distress. "We were all terrified of eating disorder patients," the young doctor confessed.
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