OTTAWA — The pandemic has taken a significant toll on many, but specifically on young women with eating disorders, according to recent data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Hospitalizations and visits to emergency rooms due to eating disorders surged by 60 per cent since March 2020 among girls aged 10 to 17.
“I know what it feels like to be in the grips of an eating disorder and I know how awful and isolating and terrifying it can feel,” said Ffion Hughes, Canadian student currently at Oxford University in the UK. “The fact that there’s just been this huge wave of people who are experiencing the same thing and who haven’t been able to get treatment or care, or at least not in a timely manner, is quite scary and quite alarming.”
Hughes says the pandemic set back the progress she made in overcoming anorexia nervosa.
“It was quite difficult for a while feeling as if I was having to turn back to a certain sense of rigidity in order to feel a sense of control in a world that was kind of going haywire.”
Fortunately, she didn’t have a full blown relapse.
“But I did find myself moving back towards a lot of the rigidity that I had finally managed to get rid of before the pandemic struck, so I was all of a sudden getting into old food rules,” Hughes said. “I was exercising more than I should have been, I wasn’t listening to my body when it came to eating, when I was hungry and in a lot of ways it was kind of a slippery slope.”
“It’s something that we are seeing a lot in the clinic,” said Annyck Besso, director of Sööma and registered dietician. “The pandemic led to a lot of isolation, a lack of control, so people trying to find ways that they could manage anxiety, manage uncertainty and food is often one of them.”
While the pandemic may have been a perfect storm for those living with eating disorders, some say accessing healthcare has always been an issue.
“We’ve had a serious gap in terms of mental health services for years,” said Hughes. “There has never really been an eating disorder system that is capable of taking in all the people who are in need of care.”
“We’re, for example, a private clinic and some people need support for years and years, but our services week to week are not accessible to everyone in the community,” Besso said.
On top of more government funding for access to services, some say more prevention is key.
“I think in our communities, in schools, with parents, with sports teams, that we can talk a bit more about assessment," said Besso. "Intervention before it gets to a point where somebody is actually in need of hospitalization."
