2024-04-26 17:49:29
More and more young girls are having an eating disorder. This is shown by a survey by the commercial health insurance company. What could be the cause of the increase?
Eating disorders have increased significantly, particularly among girls. As data from the Kaufmännische Krankenkasse (KKH) showed on Thursday, cases of anorexia, bulimia and binge eating among twelve to 17-year-old girls increased by around 54 percent between 2012 and 2022. While 90 cases per 10,000 insured people were registered in 2012, ten years later there were already 139 cases.
According to the KKH, it is not just the beauty trends promoted on social media that can put a lot of strain on the psyche and fuel self-doubt in young people, which can lead to mental illnesses such as eating disorders. The corona pandemic also seems to have hit teenage girls in particular. From the pre-corona year of 2019 to 2022 alone, the KKH registered a 38 percent increase in eating disorders in this age group.
At the same time, the proportion of twelve to 17-year-old girls with eating disorders is around four times as high as boys of the same age, with 38 cases per 10,000 insured people. According to a KKH projection, a total of around 455,000 people in Germany were treated as outpatients for anorexia, bulimia or binge eating in 2022.
Social media can promote eating disorders
According to the analysis, the more intensive the use of social media, the greater the risk of dissatisfaction with one’s own body, body shaming and associated eating disorders. This could also explain the significant increase in KKH numbers during the pandemic, because during this time children and young people were even more active on channels such as Instagram and Tiktok.
These are the most important eating disorders
At the anorexia (Anorexia nervosa) is a disease in which people starve to the point of becoming life-threatening underweight.
At Bulimia nervosa (Bulimia nervosa) those affected feel a strong compulsion to control their body weight; They vomit after binge eating and take laxatives to avoid gaining weight.
Die Binge eating disorder is accompanied by recurring, uncontrollable eating attacks and leads to severe overweight or even obesity.
Adolescents who already suffer from psychological problems or have low self-esteem are particularly susceptible to eating disorders. A warning sign is when those affected put a disproportionate amount of effort into their own appearance, suddenly give up beloved hobbies and only focus on social media. Other signals include social withdrawal, weight changes and abnormal eating behavior, including restricted food choices, vomiting or taking laxatives.
For the report, anonymized data from KKH insured persons from 2012 and from 2019 to 2022 were evaluated.