Mental health is at the center of the social debate, so much so that political leaders have pledged to launch national and regional plans to try to stop the ever-increasing increase in people whose lives cause them soul pain. But among the numbers that they all manage, the population group that society must protect above all else is relegated: children and teenagers. And in this, the increase in mental conditions has overwhelmed the existing resources. Hospitals literally do not have the capacity to care for the tens of thousands of minors with mental health problems and in many cases they have had to increase the number of beds by enabling new spaces to care for them.
"We are seeing a tremendous boom in children and teenagers and we are starting to see ourselves overwhelmed. We need more attention and prevention resources, to normalize it in schools and institutes so that people lose the fear of asking for help", explains Ángel Luis Montejo González, psychiatrist at the University Hospital of Salamanca.
This was highlighted at the XXVI National Congress of Psychiatry, held a few days ago in Salamanca and which brought together more than 1,500 professionals, in which they warned of the "brutal" increase in eating disorders (ED), which affect every day plus a larger number of teenagers and young people (especially women) and even smaller. "We are seeing girls between 10 and 12 years old in consultations with anorexia, bulimia or uncontrolled eating disorders", points out Francisco J. Vaz Leal, professor of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Extremadura (university hospital of Badajoz).
According to the data presented at the aforementioned meeting, the figures that are managed for the prevalence of these disorders are well over 6%: with respect to anorexia nervosa, they are around 1.5% in women and of 0.2% in men. For bulimia nervosa, the prevalence rates are 1.9% and 0.6%, respectively. And for empatches disorder, the figures would be around 2.8% for women and 1% in the case of men. Behind these percentages are thousands of teenagers and young people. And now too, children.
Data that psychiatrists themselves know is undervalued, because most patients hide it and do not access the healthcare system. "These are worrying figures, even more so when we consider that it is the 'tip of the iceberg', and even more so if we take into account that eating disorders tend to persist over time and have a great tendency to recur and to associate with other psychiatric problems", says Vaz Leal.
But how is it possible for a girl to have an eating disorder? Psychiatrists point out that the causes are multiple, since they arise from the interaction of biological factors with psychological or psychopathological factors and social factors.
Among the causes, genetics plays "an important role" in the genesis of eating disorders as it is "a determining element of predisposition, with genetic factors being responsible for 60-80% of the problem."
Genetic vulnerability is associated with factors that have to do with appetite regulation, with the sensitivity of certain brain areas related to reward, other elements of an endocrinometabolic type and a long et cetera, of which we are learning more and more ". In some cases, certain traumatic events that happened during childhood are added to increase the fragility of the future patient.
Patients who suffer from eating disorders, on the other hand, usually have quite specific psychological characteristics, "such as obsessive-compulsive traits or traits specific to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They also tend to be very perfectionistic and exhibit certain personality traits. Added to this in many cases are relationship difficulties, great sensitivity to other people's assessments, body image alterations and inability or difficulty to recognize and express one's own emotions".
And the social environment, which also plays an important role in triggering all these problems. "Factors such as ridicule related to body image or the social idealization of thinness move many people towards dieting, which is in many cases the gateway to eating disorders," says Vaz Leal.
