Eating Disorders and Lockdown
Eating disorders are a complex mental illness that can affect any age, gender, ethnicity and background¹. There are different types of eating disorders including anorexia, avoidance/restrictive food intake disorder (AFRID), binge eating disorder, bulimia and other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED). People with eating disorders cope with stress, anxiety and other difficult feelings through disordered eating behaviours. The incidence of Bulimia nervosa is 12 cases per 100 and the incidence of Anorexia nervosa is 8 cases per 100,000 population per year³. Despite the incidence of anorexia being lower, the highest mortality rates occur in those with Anorexia⁴. Young people between the ages of 15 and 24 with anorexia have 10 times the risk of dying compared to their same-aged peers⁵. Binge eating will affect one in fifty of us and it is also found that one in 6 of those ever affected by binge eating disorder will attempt suicide¹. This type of eating disorder is the most common yet least understood therefore BEAT are focusing on Binge eating disorder in this year’s eating disorder awareness.
References:
1. https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409365/
4. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/1107207
5. https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/statistics-research-eating-disorders
6. https://jeatdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40337-020-00319-y
7. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eat.23318
8. https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/media-centre/eating-disorder-statistics
9. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666320316846
10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0005796794901368
11. https://committees.parliament.uk/work/226/changing-the-perfect-picture-an-inquiry-into-body-image/