Anorexics and bulimics learn methods online
Young sufferers of anorexia and bulimia who try to hide their eating problems from their parents and doctors are turning to a growing number of internet chat rooms dedicated to perpetuating their illness.
A pilot study released this week of US eating disorder patients aged between 10 and 22 showed that up to a third learn new weight loss or purging methods from websites that promote eating disorders by enabling users to share tips, such as what drugs induce vomiting and what internet sites sell them.
But the study - published in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ journal Pediatrics - found that eating disorder sufferers were also learning new high-risk ways to lose weight from each other on websites aimed at helping them recover.
The survey by researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford showed a third of patients also visited pro-recovery sites and half of them learnt new weight loss and purging methods.
“Parents and physicians need to realise that the internet is essentially an unmonitored media forum,” said Rebecka Peebles, Packard Children’s adolescent medicine and eating disorder specialist and an author of the study.
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