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In the Provincial, 10 new cases were treated per month in 2019 and now there are 25 / The Arbada association has answered about 18 weekly calls
The pandemic has changed everyone's lives, altered daily routines, increased economic pressures and increased social isolation. "We have all been worried about getting sick" and if symptoms have increased in the general population, "if we transfer them to people with Eating Disorders (ED), “sadness, loneliness, stress and anxiety” have multiplied, according to Luis Lorén, Doctor of Medicine, specialist in Psychiatry and head of Hospitalization and Day Hospital of the ACT Unit of the Nuestra Señora de Gracia hospital, dedicated to patients over 18 years of age (minors are treated at the Clinical Hospital).
In the first six months of this year, referrals to the unit for very young people have grown by 50%, "although it seems that it is now stabilizing." In fact, about 250 cases are registered. If before the pandemic there were about "ten new cases a month and during the pandemic, 25." The confinement lasted 99 days and people with eating disorders "were, like everyone else, locked up, they needed to play sports and since they couldn't, they increased food restrictions to avoid weight gain," says Lorén, who adds that this was added to by the stress because the majority are young, they had to live with their family and could not hide what was happening to them.
During this time, addiction to social networks has also grown because we could only relate through them; and there appeared many counselors on diets, the cult of the body, "many of them charlatans," who have done "a lot of harm to those who have disorders."
Harmful messages
From the Arbada association (Association of relatives of patients with eating habits) they also criticize that message that was given in confinement: "Do sports, take care of yourself, control your diet... body, body, body. “It has been catastrophic,” says its president, Edurne Larrarte; who now adds attendance at the pools and "show yourself."
The association has also noticed the growth in cases, which is why Larrarte describes the situation during the pandemic as "tremendous" because they have even had a waiting list, something that had "never" happened in its 24 years of history, he says.. In May the waiting list was three weeks long and the hospital units were "overcrowded." At the Clinic there were about 24 people in emergency care, he explains, and this saturation also happens at the Provincial, where "they have had the same staff in the units since 2000."
During the coronavirus crisis they have received around 212 more families, with an increase of 18 weekly calls, they have doubled the self-help groups and if they did one family orientation talk a year, during the pandemic there have been four.
The approach to disorders, both anorexia and bulimia, is “multidisciplinary,” explains Dr. Lorén, because “the medical, the psychological and the social” must be treated. Physicians, endocrinologists, mental health professionals, psychiatrists, dieticians, nursing staff and nursing assistants must be involved. And malnutrition also affects the brain, changes emotions, affects the cardiac and digestive systems, and enhances osteoporosis. "There are 30-year-old girls whose bones look like they are 90."
The specialist recognizes that we are not sufficiently aware of how "Western culture highlights thinness." It is frowned upon to be fat and if “obsessive personality traits” are added to that, it is easier to develop the disease.
Loren gives a positive nuance. "There is a solution," he says. Statistics indicate that 50% of patients are cured; and of the other 50%, 40% suffer phases of worsening that stabilize with age and, it is true, "10% die." The sick "suffer a lot and cannot bear that suffering," he acknowledges. For the doctor, it is a "distortion" of body image. "I sometimes say that they see hallucinations" because despite their extreme thinness, they still see themselves as fat (the ratio is 10 women for every man). And he also highlights that "in that extreme thinness they do not find happiness because they always want more," until they have to be fed involuntarily.
From Arbada (Coso, 157) they have been giving preventive talks for several years in educational centers and also for families, who "each time realize sooner that there is a problem", a key factor to start treating it.
