Eating disorders or EDs are more common than we think, and surely more common than what the experts themselves have recorded. The best known are bulimia and anorexia nervosa, along with binge eating disorder, all disorders in which an unhealthy relationship with food develops.
Since the problem is related to food, TCAs are extremely dangerous to the medical health of those affected. Physical symptoms range from extreme thinness and malnutrition to morbid obesity and associated problems, with a high mortality rate from medical complications.
Below we are going to know a few data about the prevalence of eating disorders in Spain and worldwide discovering a few details of the age groups in which they appear most.
Eating disorders or EDs are mental disorders whose central problem involves pathological behavior with food.
The patient presents concern about his weight, body image and diet, developing a pathological relationship with food both in the form of addiction to it and total avoidance. Whether eating large amounts of food or not eating anything at all, the patient’s physical health suffers, developing medical problems ranging from morbid obesity to malnutrition. EDs have a high mortality rate.
Despite their extreme severity, EDs are treatable and the person who undergoes psychotherapy can improve enormously, fighting against their unhealthy relationship with food and overcoming both their fear of gaining weight and learning not to use food as a tool to manage their emotions. To achieve this, it is essential that their family and friends give them support, in addition to receiving multidisciplinary help from doctors, nurses, nutritionists, psychologists and psychiatrists specialized in EDs.
The most important TCAs
Before entering data on the prevalence of EDs, we must first know which are the main ones. Although several EDs have been proposed in diagnostic manuals, it is assumed that there are mainly three: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.
1. Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is characterized by a pathological fear of gaining weight, which manifests itself in the form of low food intake. This causes the person with anorexia to lose weight drastically, reaching extreme thinness and malnutrition, but since they have a distorted image of themselves and perceive themselves as fat, they continue to eat little or nothing and have little awareness of how thin they are. .
In bulimia nervosa you can see binge eating, episodes in which the patient eats large amounts of food as a mechanism to cope with his negative emotions, with little or no control to stop them. The problem is that these binges do not help her feel better, quite the opposite because, after doing them, she deeply regrets what he has done, fearing that she will gain weight. To make amends for what he has done, the person with bulimia purges (e.g., vomiting, using laxatives or diuretics), fasts, and exercises compulsively.
It differs from anorexia because the patient actually eats and, despite the binges and subsequent purges, you have eating habits that are stable enough to be able to maintain a normal weight. Even some people with bulimia nervosa are overweight.
The key to this disorder is binge eating and subsequent purging not the patient’s body mass index, although this may also cause some concern for the affected person.
3. Binge eating disorder
Binge eating disorder, as the name suggests, is characterized by episodes of binge eating. As with bulimia, the patient eats large amounts of food to manage his negative emotions, but it is differentiated from that disorder by the fact that there are no purges or ways to counteract the enormous amount of calories ingested. As a result, many patients with binge eating disorder are morbidly obese. It is usually called food addiction.
What is the real prevalence of eating disorders?
Knowing the exact prevalence of eating disorders is complicated, if not impossible. It is very difficult to have access to exact data on the number of people who are fighting an ED in order to calculate its true extent. Many people with anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder do not seek treatment or never receive a diagnosis both due to ignorance of the disorder and denial.
In some fortunate cases, the disorder improves on its own, making it unnecessary for the person and those closest to them to see a specialist. This is extremely rare since EDs are one of the most complicated mental disorders to solve without professional help, but it is a possibility. It should also be said that many cases are not counted because they are treated in private consultations with psychologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, endocrinologists or general practitioners.
Based on all this, and despite the fact that we have global and Spanish prevalence data, it is most likely that they have a much higher percentage in the population. If the real statistics of EDs were known, it could be demonstrated that they are very serious disorders, there would be greater awareness about them and more resources would be allocated to their detection, prevention and treatment. In any case, we are going to give a list with all the data concerning the prevalence of EDs.
EDs are more common in women than in men, with a ratio of 9 out of 10 cases. Its prevalence in Spain is between 4.1 and 6.4% in women between 12 and 21 years old, and close to 0.3% for men. 94% of the cases are women between 12 and 36 years old, although there are increasingly more cases of men and older people. Globally, the number of ED cases has doubled in the last two decades. The prevalence has gone from 3.4% to almost 8%.
In the adolescent population, the prevalence of eating disorders is 6%. 70% of adolescents, both boys and girls, admit that they do not feel comfortable with their bodies. Many teenagers would like to have a more toned, muscular and strong body in the case of boys, or slimmer and thinner in the case of girls. 6 out of 10 teenage girls believe that they would be happier if they were thinner and nearly 30% of them manifest pathological behaviors with food and weight.
11% of adolescents have carried out risk behaviors that could be recognized as part of the diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder. Among these behaviors we would find following extreme diets, having an unhealthy obsession with the calories ingested, exercising to compensate for the food ingested or even purging by causing vomiting and taking diuretics and laxatives. EDs appear at increasingly younger ages with a 15% increase in eating disorders in children under 12 years of age in the last two decades.
The university population is also very susceptible to having eating disorders. Boys and girls who have just started university are taking their first steps into the adult world, discovering that they have to cook for themselves. Since they often don’t have time and their culinary tastes tend toward fast food, their situation is the perfect breeding ground for developing an unhealthy relationship with food. In Spain, it is estimated that 21% of university women and 15% of university men are at risk of suffering from an eating disorder.
Among EDs, anorexia nervosa is the one with the highest mortality rate, associated above all with malnutrition but also with the high expectations of patients with this disorder causing them, dissatisfied with their body image, to end up committing suicide. The prevalence of anorexia nervosa in adolescent girls in Western countries is 1%, while bulimia is between 2 and 4%. The prevalence of unspecified ED is between 5 and 10%.
It is estimated that about 6% of obese children and adolescents between 9 and 16 years old meet the criteria for binge eating disorder, and 14% show subclinical symptoms of it.
