Covid: + 30% anorexia and bulimia in 2020, numbers and deaths on the rise

Rome, March 29th (beraking latest news Salute) – The Covid emergency, with the increase in social isolation and the impoverishment of social life, has caused a worsening of eating and nutrition disorders (anorexia, bulimia, etc. ..) affecting adolescents in particular, with a dramatic increase in 2020 of 30% of cases and worsening numbers in the first months of 2021. The Consult @ noi association, which brings together the associations, raised the alarm. of family members who deal with serious pathologies connected with eating disorders, who requested, with a letter, an urgent meeting with the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, underlining that this pathology must be fully recognized as a specific disease that needs multidisciplinary therapies and suitable treatment paths.

“We are launching – writes the association in the letter – a cry of alarm: thousands of adolescents and young people are getting sick and deaths are on the rise. These statistics, although so serious and, at the beginning of 2021, worsening further, are not enough to describe the serious sufferings that affect thousands of pre-adolescents, adolescents and young people, leading them, in many cases, to the end, plunging their families into despair “. The association recalls that this serious pathology continues to be underestimated, while representing a health emergency in industrialized countries: in Italy it has involved about 3 million young people, mostly adolescent girls, and caused, according to the latest official statistics available, 3500 deaths in 2018, these numbers of a dramatic pathology.

Consult @ noi denounces the serious lack of ad hoc structures in many Regions and underlines how it is necessary, in particular, to increase multidisciplinary clinics capable of recognizing and addressing the disease from its onset and supporting them with rehabilitation residences (few and absent in many Regions). Furthermore, for the association, it would also be necessary to establish hospital beds in each province for the seriously and chronically ill and to train staff to ensure that they are able to make early diagnoses.