WHEN ISOLATION LEADS TO ILLNESS
EATING DISORDERS RISE IN PANDEMIC By Madeline Armstrong
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remember the first time I made myself purge,” said Abby Elyssa, a 26-year-old journalist from Dix Hills. Elyssa started engaging in bulimic behaviors such as this when she was 9 years old to cope with negative emotions and did not receive help until after graduating from college. “I heard my parents fighting and I felt like I couldn’t control it. It made me feel better, in control," she said of purging. Bulimia is an eating disorder in which individuals consume large amounts of food and then either purge (force themselves to vomit), take laxatives, engage in extreme exercise or fast. At 21, Elyssa received outpatient therapy and saw a nutritionist, both on Long Island. She went on to co-create EDLI (Eating Disorders Long Island), which advocates for eating disorder recovery on Long Island, allows people to share their stories and provides support during recovery. There are six types of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, diabulimia, orthorexia nervosa, drunkorexia and Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED). They affect people across all races, genders, body sizes, sexuality and socioeconomic status. Although Elyssa does not believe in full recovery from an eating disorder, after years of hard work, she no longer engages in bulimic behaviors. She currently works with Danielle Sharon, EDLI co-creator and a speech language pathologist who watched her sister work through eating disorder recovery. Together, they seek to support those on Long Island suffering from eating disorders, which are on the rise, according to a number of eating di-
Photo courtesy Danie Franco / Unsplash
sorder specialists on the Island. “Our therapists are full, our nutritionists are full, most of our experienced clinicians are booked and have waiting lists,” said Sondra Kronberg, executive director of the Eating Disorder Treatment Collaborative, a founder of the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) and president of the Eating Disorder Council of Long Island. “The pandemic has only made it worse.” According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), 28.8 million Americans will suffer from eating disorders in their lifetimes. Additionally, eating disorders are the second deadliest mental illness, resulting in 10,200 deaths each year. Resources for treating eating disorders continue to be sparse, and the pandemic only worsened the issue. “There’s a lot of research that shows that the pandemic has increased and exacerbated the eating disorder crisis in the United States,” said Rebecca Eyre, CEO of Project Heal, a national eating disorder foundation that focuses on equitable access to care. “We noticed that people who had been in recovery from an eating disorder for some time had relapsed and attributed that to the stresses and the losses of the pandemic.” According to the World Health Organization, 72% of mental health services for adolescents were halted in 2020. Additionally, Taquet and colleagues conducted a study that analyzed 5.2 million health records of people under age 30
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and found that the diagnosis of eating disorders was 15.3% higher in 2020 than in previous years. Long Island, in particular, has seen an overwhelming number of people with eating disorders over the past two years. “There’s been a pretty big increase [in patients] since the start of the pandemic,” said Jeffrey DeSarbo, medical director of the ED-180 eating disorder treatment programs on Long Island. DeSarbo worked at Monte Nido Glen Cove, a residential hospital that treats eating disorders, and said the facility has had to place patients on month-long waitlists. Since Monte Nido is a residential hospital, it is among the highest levels of care that a patient can receive and is reserved for those with extreme, life-threatening cases. “We had patients who we felt were needing treatment, and by August [2020], it was difficult to get patients into the proper level of care, with six, eight, 12-week waiting periods, which can be difficult with an eating disorder,” he said. Elyssa and Sharon said they believe it makes sense that the pandemic would increase the risk of an eating disorder. “This has changed the world, and people with eating disorders don’t like change,” Elyssa said. DeSarbo shared this observation. “A lot of behaviors are based around control and
