The U.S. has noted an increase in hospitalizations from eating disorders for the past few years. Here are six things to know:
1. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, inpatient admissions for eating disorder issues among teens and young adults grew 7.2 percent per month between February 2020 and April 2021. Then, this statistic changed direction and decreased 3.6 percent per month from April through December 2021, according to a study published Nov. 7, 2022, in JAMA.
2. In May 2020, two months after the U.S. declared COVID-19 a national emergency, hospitalizations for anorexia and bulimia doubled. In April 2020, the rate of inpatient care cases was 0.3 per 100,000 people, and four weeks later, it rose to 0.6 per 100,000, according to a study JAMA published Nov. 16, 2021.
3. Marcy Doderer, CEO of Little Rock-based Arkansas Children's Hospital, told Becker's in September 2021 the location saw a 150 percent increase in emergency department visits because of mental illness disorders. She also said the pandemic is "triggering a greater number of children with eating disorders."
4. The proportion of emergency department visits for eating disorders doubled among girls in January 2022 compared to 2019, according to the CDC. The three-year trend shows a growth in the weekly number of department visits associated with eating disorders.
5. From 2019 through mid-2022, eating disorder behavioral health admissions rose 52.5 percent — about twice the rate of visits with depression, according to data collected by Trilliant Health. For mental health visits since 2018, that figure grew 107.4 percent.
6. Melissa Freizinger, PhD, associate director of the eating disorder program at Boston Children's Hospital, told NBC News, "The kids are not OK. As the pandemic started and then progressed, we kept thinking, 'Oh, it's going to get better in 2022,' 'Oh, it's going to get better in 2023,' but it hasn't."