Case Study

Eating Disorders in Teens II. Introduction Eating disorders are mental illnesses that cause serious disturbances in a person’s everyday diet. It can manifest as eating extremely small amounts of food or severely overeating. The condition may begin as just eating too little or too much but obsession with eating and food over takes over the life of a person leading to severe changes. In addition to abnormal eating patterns are distress and concern about body weight or shape. These disorders frequently coexist with other mental illnesses such asdepression, substance abuse, or anxiety disorders. Eating disorders when manifested at a young age can cause severe impairment in growth, development, fertility and overall mental and social wellbeing. In addition, they also raise the risk of an early death. People with anorexia nervosa are 18 times more likely to die early compared with people of similar age in the general population. Eating disorders can affect both men and women and are slightly more common among women. Often these disorders begin during adolescence or young adulthood but may also develop during childhood or later in life.

III. Analysis Up to one in ten teenage girls has an eating disorder, medical experts have warned. And increasing numbers of boys are also at risk, some of them as young as ten, a major study has found. Experts said that with the young under increasing pressure to ‘be perfect and look perfect’, the problem is now so severe it threatens the mental health of an entire generation. For the first time, doctors have tried to measure the rate of eating disorders through the numbers of patients attending GP practices. Across the population as a whole, the data shows a 13 per cent jump in the number of new cases diagnosed each year between 2003 and 2009. The highest rates of new cases are among girls aged 15 to 19 and boys aged ten to 14 The incidence of anorexia and bulimia, where victims make themselves sick after eating to lose or maintain weight, have stayed fairly constant but there has been a ‘significant increase’ in other eating disorders, including binge eating. In teenage girls, eating disorders are now second only to depression as the most common new mental health problem they will be diagnosed with. One in 500 girls aged 15 to 19 is likely to be formally diagnosed with an eating disorder every year, adding almost 5,000 new patients to the growing toll. Girls aged ten to 19 are now nine times more likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder as they are to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Bulimia and other eating disorders account for about 38 per cent each of new cases, while anorexia accounts for one in four cases. Modern society exerts pressure for children and young people to be perfect, to look perfect and be high achievers,’ she said. ‘Boys are starting to suffer as girls did in the past. It’s a mix of genes and environment, nature and nurture, but the reality is we don’t know enough about what causes eating disorders yet.’ The data shows that in 2003 there were 32.3 new cases of eating disorder per 100,000 people aged between ten and 49, rising to 37.2 new cases by 2009 – a 13 per cent jump. Binge eating has not previously been classified on its own, but last week the latest edition of the psychiatrists’ manual of mental health disorders made it a new eating disorder.

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Profile

Anorexia sufferer Laura Willmott died aged 18 after starving herself to barely five stone. The former private school pupil was admitted to hospital when her weight became so dangerously low that she could no longer walk. She had been fighting the illness for five years when her mother became so concerned that she took her to A&E. But she was discharged after 11 days, having been allowed to refuse treatment because she was legally an adult. She was deemed fit to return home on November 8, 2011, but continued to avoid eating and pretended she had drunk high-protein drinks. Miss Willmott, an aspiring nurse from Redland, Bristol, suffered cardiac arrest on December 12 and died of brain damage a week later. Avon Coroner’s Court was told she had been given autonomy on her treatment around the time of her 18th birthday in February 2011. But her parents criticised the decision, saying it left them ‘in the dark’ and that it became ‘impossible to persuade’ her to take treatment. Her mother said Miss Willmott was ‘doomed’ from that point. Consultant psychiatrist Dr Hugh Herzig said he had been reluctant to take all decision-making powers away from Miss Willmott. Coroner Terence Moore, who recorded a narrative verdict, called for a change in policy in the treatment of eating disorders.