anorexia, bulimia and others
Eating disorder: Experts have counted more cases since the corona pandemic
Physicians and health insurance companies are alarmed: Since the corona pandemic, places in the wards for anorexia and other eating disorders have been running out.
© Daniel Karmann / Picture Alliance
Since the corona pandemic, young people in particular have developed eating disorders more often. Experts are now sounding the alarm because therapy places are becoming scarce.
Lea has gained ten kilograms in the past few months. A daily struggle – also emotionally. The tall 16-year-old is still thin. But when she looks in the mirror, she sees something completely different. “Because you have a disturbed perception, you think you’re twice as wide,” she says. Actually, she has never felt comfortable in her body. And at some point she secretly ate less and less.
In the end, Lea had lost 20 kilograms when she came to the psychosomatic ward for children and adolescents at the clinic in Nuremberg. Since the beginning of the Corona crisis, this has increasingly had to do with anorexic patients like Lea. “It’s one and a half to twice as many as before the pandemic,” says chief physician Patrick Nonell.
Increase in cases of eating disorders: There are no therapy places
The Federal Association of Eating Disorders sees a similar development across the country. “Due to the fact that the numbers have increased so much, there are no therapy places,” says the association’s chairman, Andreas Schnebel, who also heads the Anad counseling center in Munich. “It’s also getting tight in the inpatient facilities.” And he sees another development: the patients are getting younger.
The fact that more young people with an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia have had to be treated since Corona is also confirmed by the evaluations of health insurance companies among their insured persons. According to the DAK-Gesundheit for 2020 an increase in hospital treatments for eating disorders of 9 percent compared to the previous year, among 15 to 17 year olds it is even 13 percent more. According to the KKH, there was a disproportionate increase of around 7 percent among 13 to 18 year olds.
The experts do not have a reliable explanation for this, only an assumption shared by the Nuremberg specialist Nonell. Girls in particular who suffer from anorexia are often not able to cope with stress so well, he says. During the pandemic, they suffered particularly badly from uncertainty and the fear of losing control. “Controlling your eating behavior is a form of coping strategy to regain control.”
Lockdown has made it easier to hide eating disorders
What exactly triggered her anorexia, Lea can no longer say today. During the lockdown times, she was home alone a lot because her mother and stepfather continued to work. “It definitely made it easier for me to hide it,” she says. She ate very irregularly, skipped meals or vomited after binge eating.
Lea was 15 years old at the time. A typical age for anorexia. Girls in particular suffer from this during puberty. Younger girls, some as young as eight or nine, have also been showing up at Andreas Schnebel’s Munich counseling center for a number of years. “That has to do with the fact that everything starts earlier today, like puberty and access to social media,” says the expert.
Various studies support these assumptions, says Silja Vocks, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Osnabrück. The early onset of puberty can mean that physical maturity may not be compatible with mental maturity. At the same time, children and young people are using social media earlier and earlier, where they are constantly confronted with embellished images. “The more fragile the body image, the more open you are to this influence.”
Social media can have a bad influence on patients
Special anorexia forums and pictures or videos of emaciated teenagers under special hashtags on TikTok, Instagram and other social networks are particularly problematic, says expert Iren Schulz from the “Look!” initiative. “Like-minded people meet there and push each other up.”
During the corona restrictions, young people spent even more time on the Internet, this was sometimes their only contact with the outside world – and on Instagram and other channels they constantly got revised pictures of friends, classmates and other peers to see, like the Munich psychologist Schnebel explained. But because they didn’t meet them again, they assumed their embellished appearance to be real. “The real comparisons have disappeared.”
In the past few months, Lea has fought her way back to life gram by gram – and learned to eat again. “I hope there will be days when I can accept myself for who I am,” she says. “I want to be able to become a normal teenager.”
But according to Nonell, only about half of all anorexics succeed in doing this. 30 percent suffer setbacks, in 20 percent the disease becomes chronic – with dramatic consequences for their health. “It is a very serious disease. Two percent of those affected die from it,” says Nonell.
Expert Schulz therefore sees a special responsibility in social media when they are aimed at such a young target group. “There’s still a lot to do,” she says. When dealing with incorrect body images, however, it could also be partly due to a lack of awareness of the problem. “It’s a gray area – not like pornography, where it’s regulated by law.”