To ask the Minister of Health to detail the number of people diagnosed with an eating disorder, broken down by constituency, in each of the last five years.

The number of referrals accepted to adults eating disorder services and to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) across Northern Ireland for the previous five years are presented in Table 1.

This information is not available by constituency and to do so would be at a disproportionate cost; therefore, the figures have been provided at Health and Social Care (HSC) Trust level.

Table 1: Number of referrals accepted to adults eating disorder services and CAMHS by HSC Trust (2017/18 – 2021/22)

Source: Monthly Non Inpatient Mental Health Returns and Monthly CAMHS MDS Returns from HSC Trusts, SPPG.

*The Belfast HSC Trust provides an eating disorder service for residents of the South Eastern HSC Trust.

**Proxy figures for 2021 and 2022 have been provided for the Northern HSC Trust due to limitations in data availability as a result of ongoing Information System migration.

Note 1: The figures provided are in relation to referrals, not 'people'; therefore, it is possible one individual was referred multiple times.

Note 2: It is not possible to disaggregate referrals received for eating disorder services in children as this is through a single point of entry for all CAMHS Services.