Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating
Between 2019 and the 2021 hospital admissions for causes related to eating disorders I’m tripledwith a further increasing trend at the beginning of 2022. In the same period the age of onset of these disorders, which very often coincides with the developmental one, decreased, with severe cases even from the age of eleven, twelve and thirteen.
It is the alarm raised by SINPIA – Italian Society of Neuropsychiatry of Childhood and Adolescence on the occasion of the National Day of the Lilac Bowaccording to which among the effects of the Pandemic there is, among Italian adolescents and pre-adolescents, the greater incidence of disorders related to eating behavior, such asanorexia and the bulimia.
“The demands would be even greater – explains the professor Elisa Maria Fazzipresident of SINPIA and Director of the Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Unit ASST Spedali Civili di Brescia – given that many, especially girls, unable to be welcomed in the wards due to lack of beds, are supported in reality not specifically equipped, not receiving the appropriate treatment for their pathology for which the approach of the child neuropsychiatrist, who treats mind and body, is an integral and fundamental part especially in younger subjects. Early care and the success of the first course of treatment is essential for the prognosis of the disease. We are talking about very complex patients – go on – in which the internalistic and psychopathological problems specific to the disorder are often associated with different and serious psychiatric comorbidities and the skills of the child neuropsychiatry services are absolutely central in the pathways of taking care of these patients, not least the importance given to involvement of the family in the care path “.
I eating disorders or eating disorders, which arise mainly in adolescence and mainly affect the female sex, are pathologies characterized by an alteration in eating habits and an excessive concern for weight and body shapes. The main eating disorders arenervous anorexiathe bulimia nervosa and the binge eating disorder (o Binge Eating Disorder – BED).
During the confinement and the pandemic the concern for the salutefor thephysical aspect and for thesport activity were among the main factors for the onset of eating disorders among adolescents. Added to these are other risk factors such as excessive time spent using the social media and the influence these have on the ideal of thinness. Furthermore, isolation and loneliness are consequences of anorexia and can be made worse by the quarantines imposed during the health crisis.
“Fear of virus infection – explains Dr. Rosamaria SiracusanoCoordinator of the Scientific Section of Psychiatry of SINPIA and Medical Director of UOSD Child Neuropsychiatry AOU Federico II of Naples – it fostered the feeling of loss of control which, in people with eating disorders, is often managed with an increase in dietary restrictions or other extreme weight control behaviors or with binge eating episodes ”.
According to SINPIA, the weight of acute and serious cases related to eating disorders has translated dramatically on hospitalizations of increasingly compromised patients, who only find an immediate place of welcome in hospital wards in serious or very serious situations. Furthermore, the increased complexity and severity of cases is reflected in longer hospital stays compared to the past, also due to the lack of intermediate structures, of outpatient or day hospital macro-activities, in which to allow the patient a return to the territory or to more specifically rehabilitative structures.
Finally, the care of patients with eating disorders requires the active involvement of family (often dysfunctional), a process that requires a path of support for parents, of gradual reintegration of the patient in the family environment and in social and school life, maintaining a strict surveillance path.
The SINPIA is a Scientific Association whose purpose is to protect the mental health of childhood and adolescence, the development of research and prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of neurological, neuropsychological and / or psychiatric pathologies of childhood and adolescence (from 0 to 18 years) and all the developmental disorders of the child in its various lines of expression (motor, communicative-linguistic, cognitive-intellectual, affective and relational).
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