In the last two years, visits to the emergency room of the Bambino Gesù children’s hospital in Rome for eating disorders have almost doubled. Hospitalizations also increased by more than 50%, going from 180 pre-pandemic cases (2019) to almost 300 cases in the last year. While, more generally, the onset of these disorders is always earlier. In recent years, in fact, there has been a decrease in age to 8 or 9 years. On the eve of the national day of the ‘Lilac Bow’, dedicated to eating disorders, the hospital of the Holy See announces the data of a phenomenon that involves around 3 million people in Italy and represents worldwide, according to the World Health Organization , the second leading cause of death for girls aged 12 to 25.
In detail, in 2021 and 2022 visits to the emergency room of the Child Jesus linked to eating disorders grew by 96.8% compared to the previous two-year period (2019-2020), going from 463 to 911. Ordinary hospitalizations, on the other hand, increased from 362 in 2019-2020 to 565 in 2021-2022 (+56%). Day hospitals also increased from 1,062 to 1,320 (+24.3%). The trend is also confirmed by the comparison between the data of 2019 (the last one before Covid) with those of 2022, in which accesses to the emergency department increased from 214 to 443 (+107.1%), hospitalizations from 180 to 279 (+55%) and day hospitals from 607 to 669 (+10.2%). A trend that confirms the increase in youth discomfort during the years of the pandemic.
“The lockdown first and the social restrictions afterwards – explains Dr. Valeria Zanna, responsible for anorexia and eating disorders of the Child Jesus – acted as a detonator for a malaise that was often already present, sometimes in a less obvious way, sometimes more Covid and the quarantine were certainly accelerating factors, but many of these girls and boys were already trained to eat secretly, vomit secretly, live secretly”. Eating disorders in the field of psychiatric pathologies have the highest mortality rate, in particular, in the case of anorexia nervosa the risk of death is 5-10 times greater than that of healthy people of the same age and sex. In Italy, bulimia and anorexia cause more than 4,000 deaths.