Eating Disorders in Pre-adolescents

“Eating Disorders Could Start as Early as Elementary School”

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283632.php

 

            Children as young as 8-12 years who are difficult eaters could actually be experiencing eating disorders typically associated with teenagers and young adults according to researchers from the University of Montreal in Canada and the CHU Sainte-Justine children’s hospital. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) defines an eating disorder as “An illness that causes significant disturbances to an individual's everyday diet. This can include eating very small amounts of food or severely overeating.”

Researchers studied 215 children who had eating problems and it was found that “95% had restrictive eating behaviors, 69.4% were afraid of putting on weight and 46.6% described themselves as fat.”  Additionally, the study revealed that “15.5% of the children occasionally made themselves vomit and 13.3% had bulimic behaviors.”  As surprising and disturbing as these statistics are, the investigation into this matter can help dietitians make an earlier diagnosis and begin treating young patients with eating disorders.

This is something to think about in nutrition management.  In the midst of a child obesity epidemic, it is easy to overlook children who are restrictively eating and more attention needs to be paid to children who are difficult eaters.  Because of this age group being younger than what is typically identified as an eating disorder group, dietitians need to look beyond the idea of a child being a “picky” or “difficult” eater.  We need to look for patterns of behavior in this group and find interactions between social, genetic, behavioral, biological and psychological environments that could foster the development of eating disorders.

 

-ER