Eating Disorders After Covid: An Evergrowing Disease
WORDS BY GEORGIA NOLAN.
It’s been almost three years since the COVID-19 outbreak, and many could say that, as a country, we’ve returned to our normal lives. But the pandemic still affects many Australians to this day. While the financial burdens are being seen and felt by everybody, the continuing psychological burdens of COVID seem to go unnoticed.
‘We’ve seen such an increase in eating disorders, particularly over the COVID-19 pandemic,’ Dr Gemma Sharp claims. Sharp is a Senior Clinical Psychologist from Monash University. She revealed in an ABC News segment earlier this year that 1 in 5 kids are experiencing eating disorders - that being, approximately 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys. These statistics barely touch the surface, with many cases going unreported - in particular, male eating disorders, which may present more as a desire to achieve the ‘ideal’ physique, and look ‘lean and muscular’ (‘Men, boys, and eating disorders’, n.d.).
Four Corners’ documentary ‘Fading Away’ (2023) further explores eating disorders post-COVID. It features 23-year-old Sara Ahearn, who has suffered from severe anorexia for over 10 years. She had a brief period of recovery a few years ago in which she studied psychology and nursing. That was, until COVID broke out. Abrupt changes and restrictions in environment and routine caused Sara, like many others, to relapse. Now, three years on, Sara is practically begging for effective medical assistance.
REPORTSara’s mother fears for her daughter’s life, claiming her eating disorder is ‘at its worst’.
A 2021 study from the Journal of Eating Disorders investigates the impact of COVID-19 on adolescents. Of the 48 patients interviewed, 40% cited the pandemic as a precipitating factor to their eating disorder. Reasons for their distress ranged from not being able to play competitive sports, worrying about their grades after classes shifted online, and boredom and loneliness from being in lockdown. The same 40% were reported to have suffered a steeper decline in health, and showed more presentations of ‘medical instability’ and lower BMIs on average. This explains the greater demand for inpatient admission during the height of the pandemic. COVID posed a ‘disruption in normative developmental processes’ for many young people; many suffered a major loss in social interactions and structure, turning to social media for comfort.
22-year-old student Sophie suffered anorexia 6 years ago. After hospitalisation and regular monitoring, she made a full recovery in 1 year. I asked her to reflect on adolescents experiencing what she experienced and living with the pandemic. She commented:
‘Some eating disorders, including mine, are caused by a stressful, rapid change in environment. It was unsurprising to me that cases surged when COVID broke out and lockdowns were enforced. To cope with fear of the future, social restrictions and limits on physical activity, people self-harmed through food.’
Furthermore, Sophie commented on current eating disorder awareness, particularly regarding younger people:
‘While I think eating disorder awareness has definitely improved over recent years, there is going to be an inevitable increase in cases as more children are being exposed to social media.’
Many can agree that social media is a negative influence on young people’s body image, especially on social media platforms such as TikTok.
Aussie YouTuber Katlyn Stewart (aka ‘Drama Kween’) claims she’s been ‘seeing a lot of new things about weight and body image issues [...] on TikTok’.
‘There are people who are now posting “thinspo” images where [...] they’re taking a photo of somebody who is a certain weight and [...] saying “this makes me not want to eat”, and I think that is very triggering to, you know, obviously a lot of people.’
On a positive note, echoing Sophie’s observation, eating disorder awareness does seem to be increasing.
In fact, Flinders University has partnered with the Statewide Eating Disorder Service (SEDS) to build a new $7.1 million centre at the refurbished Repat in Daw Park (‘New home for eating disorder services’, 2019).
The new SEDS building will hopefully provide effective and evidence-based treatment and also function as a research facility. I asked leading researcher of the project, Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Psychology Tracey Wade when the building would be complete.
‘We hope to have the build finished by end of 2024,’ Professor Wade informs. ‘It has been a partnership between the Federal and State government and Breakthrough Mental Health Foundation, liaising with services and people with lived experience and me.’
This new development certainly won’t undo the damage COVID has done, but it is a cause for hope.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This article has been reuploaded and was originally published in 2023.