Early onset eating disorders: new findings

Early-onset eating disorders affect about 3 in every 100,000 children under the age of 13, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Experts from the UCL Institute of Child Health, who carried out the research, are calling for 'urgent action' to improve both the detection of eating disorders in young children and availability of services. The research team used the well-established British Paediatric Surveillance Unit of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a new child and adolescent psychiatry surveillance system, to identify new cases of eating disorders in children aged between 5 and 13 years, and living in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Over a 14 month period, 208 cases of early-onset eating disorders were confirmed. The researchers estimate that this gives an overall incidence rate of 3.01 cases in every 100,000 children. As expected, most of the 208 children with eating disorders were girls (82%), with boys accounting for 18%. In total, 37% of the children were diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.