The main eating disorders seen in childhood are childhood obesity, pica, rumination disorder, post traumatic eating disorder, overnutrition, selective food rejection, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Eating disorders seen in childhood and adolescence affect children’s lives negatively in many ways, and sometimes even lead to life-threatening complications. Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment are very important.
In some cases of eating disorder, environmental causes such as psychosocial causes, lack of stimuli, emotional and physical neglect, and mental pathology in parents are reported, while in some cases, attention is drawn to the organic aspect of eating disorders.
The early mother-infant relationship forms an important basis for the development of eating disorders in infancy and later years. The process of eating and feeding relationship that starts with infancy and parental attitudes should be evaluated. Parents also need support in controlling their own feelings about their child’s feeding problem. Some mothers equate being a good mother with feeding their child well and give their full attention to the eating-feeding relationship. They experience tensions in the relationship at mealtimes by giving importance to how much the child eats rather than what, where and how. Taking the nutritional history is very important in terms of determining the possible dynamics causing the problem.
In addition to overnutrition and obesity in infancy, infancy anorexia cases have also been reported, but anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are generally among the first eating disorders seen in adolescence. In both problems, there is an excessive preoccupation with body weight, but binge eating attacks that cannot be prevented and behaviors such as vomiting and excessive exercise to control weight gain are observed in bulimic cases.
Obesity is increasing all over the world, becoming an epidemic problem in adolescents and children. Obese patients are generally divided into two subgroups in studies as obese with binge eating disorder and obese without binge eating disorder. Obese people with binge eating disorder are more likely to be overweight and have more psychopathology compared to the other group. Those with binge eating have a particularly high rate of depression. Impulsivity, aggression and anger; It is among the important psychopathological features seen in patients with eating disorders. Impulsive features were found to be high especially in those with binge eating disorder. It is known that impulsive children are more prone to delicious foods, therefore more attention should be paid to their diet programs. It is important to comprehensively evaluate the mental status of patients with eating disorders and to treat them if there are problems that predispose them to eating disorders.
The results of obesity treatment in children are more positive than in adults. The reasons such as being able to receive family support, changing their habits more quickly than adults, being more suitable for exercise, and being open to change in their body structures increase the success of treatment in children.
In the treatment of eating disorders, individual psychotherapy, family therapy, drug therapy and, when necessary, inpatient treatment methods are used. It is especially important that patients with life-threatening conditions, such as anorexia nervosa, whose general medical condition deteriorates, receive inpatient service.
