Act quickly on child food problems
'Fair City' actress Orlaith Rafter, whose character in the TV soap suffered from Bulimia, in the eating disorder unit of St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin
Psychotherapist Mary O'Connor, who runs the eating disorder programme at the Rutland Centre, says that binge-eating and over-eating usually start before 10 years of age, and anorexia tends to begin around 12.
She has urged parents to stop using 'treats' such as McDonald's hamburgers as a reward for good behaviour and never to put children on diets.
The Rutland Centre is set to begin special evening courses in a bid to cope with the soaring numbers of people suffering from eating disorders.
Bodywhys, the Eating Disorders Association of Ireland, believes that up to 200,000 people here suffer from anorexia, bulimia and over-eating. "Usually by the time they get to us here at the Rutland Centre they have been either making themselves sick or binge-eating for years and years. That is unfortunate in a way, because it gets very deep-seated in people the longer it goes on, and is more difficult to treat," said Ms O'Connor.
"The earlier you get to a child the better chance you have of sorting it out in a short period of time."
Overeaters who go on to become obese in later life usually start using food as a comfort as very young children, she said. "In my experience over-eaters usually start before they are 10 years old. Food may have been given as a reward, meals at home could be very large and high in fat or they could have started stealing food.
"Tackling it is all about educating ourselves on healthy nutrition, and as parents we have to look at what we are eating ourselves.
"Most of us would have a good sense when a child is becoming overweight, and that is the time to take a very careful look at what he or she is consuming. Diets are a very bad idea, because they don't work and once the idea of dieting has got into the mentality it is very difficult to shift it.
"If you eat healthy and regular meals it is likely that your weight will normalise, and the same is the case for a child unless there is a medical problem there. Something like the food pyramid is very easy to understand and follow. By using it as a guide it is difficult to go wrong."
Ms O'Connor says that rewarding children with foods such as McDonald's hamburgers is a bad idea. And she warns parents not to comment if their child is gaining weight. "You can say to 100 children that they would want to watch their weight but if you say it to one child who is vulnerable to having an eating disorder, that could be enough to spark a lifetime of problems with food."
Earlier last week a desperate mother told how her nine-year-old son is in hospital battling anorexia after becoming obsessed with counting calories. The shocking story has highlighted the lack of services for people with eating disorders.
In response to the soaring number of people requiring treatment for anorexia, bulimia and obesity, the Rutland Centre is set to start an intensive evening course.
"If someone is coming to us looking for treatment for an eating disorder there are usually a whole variety of reasons." said Ms O'Conor.
"There is personality stuff, family stuff, cultural stuff and all sorts of things to do with their childhood development that can spark it off," she says.
"Anorexia usually begins around puberty and the majority of my clients would say that they didn't like getting their periods or had problems with their body changing and moving into sexuality.
"Anorexics are usually perfectionists and very ambitious but they have problems with their emotional development. Some want to keep a body that is childlike to reject becoming women, but others believe their eating disorder makes them more attractive to men. It is a very complex illness.
"I would say to parents that it is vital to get their child help if they start down the road of vomiting and extreme weight loss - and that help has to be professional help.
"The more entrenched any of these activities become, the harder it is to treat them. The earlier the intervention the better."
- NICOLA TALLANT
