Eating Disorders - A Cause of Concern

The increase in the number of “figure conscious” youths, and the rising popularity of “size zero” models and celebrities is said to have an adverse effect on the body image of many youngsters. According to a spokesman for Beat, an eating disorder charity, these people are very vulnerable and the size zero images are certainly a contributory factor for eating disorders

Today a large number of people in the country are suffering from eating disorders. The gravity of problem of eating disorders gets highlighted from the Hospital Episode Statistics, which reveals that over the years there has been a significant increase in the number of patients with eating disorders. This is evident from the increase in the numbers of bed days which were taken up by patients suffering from eating disorders. In this regard the data on Health Service wards, in the year 2007, indicates that the numbers of bed days, which were taken up by patients suffering from eating disorders, increased up to 84,377 bed days as compared to 51,878 bed days in the year 2002.

Further more the hospital data also reveals that patients needing hospital treatment from eating disorders generally suffer anorexia or bulimia. In this regard, the hospital data reveals that the number of patient admitted with anorexia increased by 11% while that of bulimia increased up to 150% in the year 2006-2007 as compared to the admission number for the year 2005-2006.

Based on the hospital data, a gender wise study about eating disorder reveals that there has been a significant increase in the number of number of men suffering from eating disorders.

Highlighting the age factor in the context of eating disorders, the data revealed that, patients under the age of 15 accounted for 1/5th of the total number of patients admitted with eating disorder. Such kind of finding is also revealed from the study conducted by the British Pediatric Surveillance Unit, in a 13-month period to April 2006, which showed that around 206 children under 13 had been suffering from eating disorders.

Due to the increase in the number of eating disorders, last year the government announced a multimillion-pound grant to the Institute of Psychiatry to research into the problem of eating disorder.

Today a large number of steps are being taken to find solution to the problem of eating disorder. In this regard the Model Health Inquiry report, which investigated into the problem has put forth 14 non-binding suggestions, In fact it has also urged the London Fashion Week to consider forcing models to present medical certificates so as to prove that they did not have eating disorders.