Children under 10 years in hospital with eating disorders as admissions increase

The new figures show that hospital admissions for children and youth with eating disorders are at the highest level in recent years.

Forty-one of 2196 hospitalizations in England in 2017/18 involved boys and girls as young as 10 years old.

Public Health England stated that there had been more entries that year than during the previous four years.

Statistics show that more girls than boys were admitted in each age group.

Of the total admissions, 2,006 were girls, of whom 1,326 were girls aged 13-17.

The report, based on figures from the Office for National Statistics from 2013 to 2018, indicates that while bulimia is more prevalent, anorexia accounts for a larger proportion of admissions to the hospital.

Nuno Albuquerque, of the UK Addiction Treatment Group (UKAT), which owns a number of private rehabilitation facilities across the country, suggested that social media could be a contributing factor to the rise.

He said, "Eating disorders in youth and children in particular are extremely troubling because they are more likely to develop long-term physical and psychiatric problems as a result of eating disorders.

"We think that the idolization of social media and celebrities is largely related to the upsurge of eating disorders related to body image problems, but there is also a social problem much deeper in children who suffer from a lack of attachment on the part of their parents. "