SIR: I write in response to your article, regarding the battle between Michelle Bridgland's family and Wigan and Bolton Health Authority.

I feel that Michelle's current weight loss is not due to the failure of the treatment, but to the lack of adequate support since she was discharged.

While there are many doctors who show great empathy and consideration to people who are affected by an eating disorder, the majority of the medical profession seems totally unable to accept that anorexia is not simply a "slimmer's disease". It's not about vanity, and, although a diet is often a trigger for anorexia, the weight loss is a symptom. Regaining weight does not resolve the underlying problems.

Until all aspects of anorexia are treated, people like Michelle become trapped in a repetitive cycle of weight loss and gain, which can often last for many years. Unless you have experienced this, the effects on not only the sufferer, but their family and friends, cannot be fully appreciated.

Until people realise that anorexia does not start with weight loss, they cannot understand that it is not cured by weight gain.

?Mrs Carol A Cummings,

Greenwood Avenue,

Horwich,

Bolton.

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