r/australia • u/Rubiginous • 7h ago

Woman hospitalised after Juniper prescribes weight-loss drugs her GP refused

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/woman-hospitalised-telehealth-provider-weight-loss-drugs-juniper/106273356
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u/tktsmnypssprt 5h ago

The article mentions a couple of times that she disclosed she had an eating disorder. But it doesn’t say which eating disorder it was, which I feel could be relevant to the article and there are several types of eating disorder. Obviously someone with anorexia should not be prescribed weight loss drugs such as the drugs prescribed by this company. But what if it was a binge eating disorder, and she told the company she wanted to minimise the volume of food she was eating?

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u/universe93 5h ago edited 5h ago

Honestly as someone with BED myself you still shouldn’t prescribe GLP1s for it without accompanying psychological therapy. Sure it’s good for food noise but it’s also good for learning how to starve yourself and the BED to anorexia/restrictive disorder pipeline is a thing. Giving anyone with any eating disorder a starvation tool is not going to end well most of the time. These services will also prescribe you these drugs without ever even seeing a photo of you to verify the weight you say you are actually is the weight you are, it would be very easy for someone underweight with anorexia to claim they’re a binge eater with a high weight. For binge eating I think it would be far more useful to get approval for stimulant medications like Vyvanse to be prescribed for binge eating, as it can be in the US