Does your child have an eating disorder?
CHILDREN are smart, and everything you say or do around them could influence their behaviour. The same goes for their eating patterns. While more common in adolescents, children as young as age five have been diagnosed with one or sometimes more eating disorders.
Dr Anona Griffith, paediatrician at Gateway Plaza, Old Harbour, described eating disorders as a group of serious mental illnesses.
“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [under which all eating disorders are characterised] defines them as persistent disturbance of eating or eating-related behaviour that results in altered consumption or absorption of food, and that significantly impairs physical health/ psychosocial functioning,” Dr Griffith said.
She pointed out that four major eating disorders have been identified — anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and other specified feeding and eating disorders. However, they are usually very difficult to diagnose considering that children’s body weight and nutrition requirements vary as they experience growth spurts.
Dr Griffith said these eating disorders, while more popular in adolescents, could surface in childhood for varying reasons because they are multifactorial and could be influenced by genetics, environment, and neurobiology.
“While there has been an increase in the number of small children with eating disorders, adolescents are the most at-risk group. This is a direct result of the very nature of that period of development in which intense physical, hormonal, emotional and psychological changes take place. It brings along with it periods of stress, anxiety, confusion, struggles with self-esteem and body image, where the boys want to become muscular and the girls want to be thin,” she explained.
Below, she shares a plethora of signs which she says are often used in the diagnosis of these disorders:
• Intense fear of gaining weight
• Negative or distorted self-image
• Refusal to eat
• Significant decrease in portion size or alternatively disappearance of large amounts of food over short periods of time
• Frequent restroom trips
• Obsession with dieting and calorie counting
• Avoidance of certain food groups — (carbs, fats)
• Hiding weight loss
• Mood swings
• Excessive exercising
Physical signs include:
•Noticeable fluctuation in weight, including dramatic weight loss
•Stomach and gastrointestinal issues — abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, constipation
•Menstrual irregularities, including absent menses
•Difficulty concentrating
•Feeling cold
•Skin and hair problems — dry skin, hair loss, thinning, brittle hair
•Calluses on the back of the hand
•Dental problems (erosion from self-induced vomiting, cavities, tooth sensitivity)
•Fainting/syncope, feeling tired all the time.
Dr Griffith further explained that in cases of children with anorexia nervosa, the condition is characterised by a distorted body image and excessive dieting resulting in severe weight loss with a pathological fear of becoming fat, while those with bulimia nervosa usually present frequent episodes of binge eating, followed by inappropriate compensatory behaviour including self-induced vomiting and ingestion of laxatives to reduce absorption of nutrients.
