THE number of children aged between eight and 12 suffering from eating disorders in Ireland has doubled in the past two years.

The country is in the grip of an anorexia and bulimia epidemic among children, according to the main Dublin treatment centre.

“All kids are told is ‘don’t get fat’,” said Kielty Oberlin, a counselling psychologist at the Marino Therapy Centre, which treats more than 200 people each week, the majority of whom are under 16.

“The constant focus on obesity is triggering a rise in numbers of young children with eating disorders. Kids as young as three are told that fat is the enemy so children have a chronic fear of putting on weight.”

Experts attribute the rise in “tweenie” eating disorders to diet-obsessed parents, a climb in schoolyard bullying and increased pressure to conform to images of stick-thin models.Hysteria over rising levels of obesity has helped to trigger an increase in eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa among schoolchildren.

The number of young boys who suffer from eating distress, many of whom have contemplated suicide, is now equal to the number of girls.

“Formerly, we could treat the younger generation without the fear of suicide, but this is no longer the case,” said Oberlin.

“The symptoms are more aggressive in the younger generation and they self-harm more. Kids learn from their parents and they are modelling their parents who are all on Weight Watchers because they think they are fat.”

One teenager was hospitalised last year after taking eight ecstasy tablets a day in an attempt to control her weight.

There are no figures available for eating disorders in Ireland, but doctors say they are on the rise and local psychiatric services cannot cope with the level of body-image crisis in adults and young children.

There are only three dedicated public beds for eating disorders in Ireland, located at St Vincent’s hospital, Dublin, and referral rates to the unit have almost quadrupled in the past five years.

“Eating disorders are not taken seriously in Ireland,” said Professor Kevin Malone from the department of psychiatry and mental health research at St Vincent’s.

“We get young girls arriving as low as four stone — their body mass index is unbelieveable. With that kind of weight loss, they have bone marrow and hormone supression. Due to their starvation, their whole metabolism goes into shutdown, they can just drop dead from a heart attack.

“There is huge psychological distress associated with eating disorders. They tear families apart and it is not their fault. Unfortunately, there is a stigma attached to mental illness and a lack of understanding about eating disorders in a post- famine era. The idea that people won’t eat is completely alien, it generates a lot of anger and hostility.”

Others say that, in trying to tackle the problem of obesity, health experts have exacerbated the eating disorder problem.

“The flip side of the obesity task force is that it may have increased the number of people with eating disorders,” said Marie Devine, chairman of Bodywhys, a voluntary support group that has more than 5,000 children, their parents and adults seeking support from its online site, Bodywhys.ie, each month.

“It is a crying shame that there is no specialised eating disorder service for these kids and it is frightening the amount of parents seeking help for children under 10,” said Devine.

“We need a dedicated centre of excellence and to carry out proper research on body image disorders.”

Susan Vasquez, the editor of Kiss magazine, Ireland’s only magazine for young girls, said: “We were shocked at the lack of research and statistics in Ireland.”

Last week, the magazine released details of a survey it commissioned of over 1,000 Irish teenagers and revealed that 49% hated looking at themselves in the mirror.

About 70% said they felt depressed because of their bodies, and ranked Paris Hilton, the heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune, in their top three list of ideal celebrity bodies. Only one in five adolescents said they were happy with their bodies.

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