There are 126 centers in Italy dedicated to the treatment of nutrition and eating disorders, of which 112 are public and 14 belong to the accredited private sector. The largest number of centers (63) are located in the northern regions (in particular 20 in Emilia Romagna and 15 in Lombardy), in the center there are 23 (of which 8 in Lazio and 6 in Umbria), while 40 are distributed between the South and the Islands (12 in Campania and 7 in Sicily). With the update of the online platform dedicated to these centers (census as of February 28), this is the territorial mapping of the Higher Institute of Health (ISS), published in view of the ‘lilac bow’ day, coordinated by the National Addiction and Doping Center of the ISS, and created with the technical and financial support of the Ministry of Health-Ccm.
“Eating and nutrition disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating – says Simona Pichini, acting manager of the National Center for Addiction and Doping of the ISS – are unfortunately increasingly widespread, affecting ever younger sections of the population and, if not diagnosed and treated early, they tend to become chronic with serious effects on the whole organism, sometimes even lethal.Our web platform, constantly updated, is a valuable service because it offers, in real time, a database of treatment centers of these disorders, which provide for a global and integrated management, thus allowing citizens with nutrition and eating disorders, their families and those close to them the opportunity to take advantage of appropriate interventions”.
The platform offers detailed information on the services starting from the geographical distribution. Compared to the age group taken care of by the centres, 84% said they take care of people aged 18 or over, 82% the 15-17 age group and 48% minors up to 14 years. The method of access is direct in 77% of cases, i.e. it is the patient himself who goes to the facility. The centers provide for access by paying the health ticket (68%), free of charge (33%), under the intramoenia system (11%). While there are 1491 professionals who work there, almost all trained and updated: above all psychologists (25%), child psychiatrists and neuropsychiatrists (18%), nurses (15%), dieticians (12%), professional educators (8%) , specialists in clinical nutrition (7%), internists or paediatricians (5%) and other specialists (including psychiatric rehabilitation technicians, social workers, physiotherapists and motor rehabilitation operators).
Almost all the services surveyed record the onset of the pathology (97%), the time elapsed between the onset and taking charge of the patient (96%) and any previous treatments (98%). And they offer, in 85% of cases, specialist outpatient assistance, but also intensive or semi-residential outpatient therapies (59%), while intensive residential rehabilitation is offered by 23% of the structures.
The most used diagnostic tool (87%) is the Dsm5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Once the diagnosis has been made, the offer integrates different types of intervention: psychotherapeutic (99%), monitoring of the psychic-physical-nutritional condition (99%), nutritional (98%), pharmacological therapy (98%), psychoeducational (97%), habilitation or physical and social rehabilitation (66%).
Psychotherapeutic interventions include individual (98%), family (77%) and group (68%) approaches, often co-present. Nutritional interventions include dietary counseling (92%), prescription of food supplements (90%), nutritional rehabilitation (85%), artificial nutrition (71%), assisted meals (67%), supplementation oral (65%). The assessment of the quality of the service is carried out by 44% of the centers which measure user satisfaction (in 97% of cases), family satisfaction (63%) and operator satisfaction (42%).