Anorexia Nervosa on the rise in women in 50s

8 March, 2008

Anorexia nervosa has been generally confined to teenaged girls and “figure-conscious” young women. Not any more.

Now, more and more older women in their 40s and 50s are developing anorexia in their effort to emulate youthful-looking celebrities, a recent study has revealed.

Glamorous images of older celebrities, including pop star Madonna and Hollywood actress Sharon Stone, are giving middle-aged women what experts call “false expectations about how they should – and can – look.”

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder marked by unhealthy weight loss and self-starvation. Anorexics have a distorted self-image and an irrational fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even when they are underweight.

The condition is often chronic, and anorexia is blamed for one of the highest premature death rates of all mental illnesses – between 5% and 20% of anorexics will die due to the condition.

The study by a team of doctors at the British Dietetic Association show that 10% of all patients treated at its clinics for eating disorders are now women over 40.

The British newspaper Daily Mail quoted Ursula Philpot, a dietitian at the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders and chairman of the British Dietetic Association’s Mental Health Group, as saying, “Ten years ago, most patients in our clinics were young women but there has been a big shift in age in recent years. For many older women, something has happened to them – an event such as divorce or their children leaving home, which has triggered their disorder.”

“But the quest for perfection and a desire to look like unobtainable celebrities,” Ursula Philpot added, “makes them feel bad and may worsen their disorder. While it could be a result of better diagnosis and treating cases in these groups, it may reflect a more general changing demographic trend.

But, at this stage, we just don’t know. In response, we have had to develop specific treatments to address issues pertinent to these groups.”

The number of men being treated for anorexia is also on the rise, she says. Deanne Jade, principal and founder of the National Centre for Eating Disorders, the United Kingdom, remarked, “There is a new pressure on older women to stay young. Previously, no one would have expected it – people simply grew old gracefully. Today, people do anything they can to stave off getting old. There are people who had a transitory eating disorder in their teens or 20s, but conquered it. It could be reactivated when they hit their 50s and experience this pressure.”

The newspaper Independent quoted Mary George, a spokeswoman for Beat, the British charity for eating disorders, as saying, “It is a much more
competitive world that we live in now. Older role models such as Sharon Stone, Madonna or Jane Fonda put extra pressure on women and make them worried about their body issues, which can lead to an eating disorder. It must be remembered that a full-blown eating disorder is a mental illness, but there is no doubt that these extra pressures on older women could trigger an eating disorder.”

Meanwhile, another study, appearing in the Journal of Affective Disorders, found that anorexics are at a higher risk of death by suicide than the average person because anorexics are more likely to choose deadlier methods like hanging and jumping in front of trains.

“People with anorexia complete suicide at a rate that is about 57 times higher than the expected rate in similar populations that don't have anorexia,” it said.

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