The butterfly Foundation has today released a new report on the prevalence of Eating Disorders in Australia it found that 1.1 million Australians are currently living with an eating disorder which is a significant increase from 2012 when the last report of this kind was published in particular there was a significant rise in the number of young.
People experiencing Eating Disorders what can you tell me yeah well it's really the most definitive report we have on the state of eating disorders in Australia so for some context it's called the paying the price report it was done in collaboration with the butterfly Foundation which is really the key body in Australia for eating.
Disorders and also Deo one of the big Consulting companies in Australia now the first edition of this report was published in 2012 so over a decade ago and this is only the second edition of this report that has ever been done and that old report from 2012 is still regularly quoted in the media and by the government when they're looking at.
Eating disorders in Australia it's quite surprising it's been quite a while between reports it's been 12 years I mean a lot has happened and so it's a really important report that has come out and it's this updated version on exactly what the state of Eating Disorders in Australia is so give me a sense then of what those top level.
Findings actually are so at a very top level what they found is that there has been a significant increase of Eating Disorders in Australia from that 12E Mark exactly so I'll go through some of these findings there are an estimated 1.1 million Australians who are currently living with an eating disorder in.
Australia and that's about 4.5% of the total population so to give you a point of comparison in 2012 there were about 910,000 so that's an increase of about 200,000 people which is about 21% and that increase has been seen particularly in women and in young people nearly one in four people who experiened an eaing disorder in.
Australia are actually under the age of 19 right that really surprised me under the age of 19 it's so young and that proportion of the population under 19 who are now experiencing an eaing disorder that has also increased so there's been a 12% increase specifically in people under 19 so they kind of take all of that and boil it down we've seen.
An increase in the percentage of Australians who have a needing disorder from this time 12 years ago and we've seen a particular incre inrease in young people exactly so my understanding is that eating disorder is quite a broad term and there are different types of eating disorders that a person can have am I on the right page here yeah it's.
Kind of like an umbrella term and there are lots of different types of eating disorders that a person can have and the definitions for these different types has evolved over time as our understanding of what an eating disorder entails has also evolved I'll go through some of the types so it includes anorexia nervosa bulimia nervosa and.
Bing eaing disorder which are probably the ones that people are most familiar with but it also included other types including avoidant SL restrictive food intake disorder and that means avoiding or restricting food intake resulting in significant weight loss but it's different from the other types that I mentioned because the person is not.
Necessarily preoccupied with their body weight or shape which is a key factor in the other ones that I mentioned right one thing to note is that that 1.1 million figure does not include things like orthorexia which you might have heard of and that's an obsession with the quality and health benefits of unprocessed foods and it also doesn't.
Include disordered eating which has similar characteristics to the other types but it's just not necessarily as severe so the scope of people experiencing these Eating Disorders could be a lot larger I'm really interested in why we've seen an increase in young people did the report go into any more detail as to why they think.
There's been that Spike yeah this was my key question as well because the report kind of spoke about the statistics it also spoke about the cost of Eating Disorders to the economy which we'll go into later but my question I really wanted to understand was why and so I jumped on a call with the CEO of the butterfly Foundation Dr Jim Hungerford.
About this here's what he said unfortunately we don't know all the reasons behind it what we've seen is that previously um people aged 20 to 24 had the highest risk of Eating Disorders that's now moved to people aged 15 to 19 it might be partly a good reason that people are being diagnosed earlier but we're really worrying that the pressures.
That everyone is under and we're all aware of the pressures that come just from life out of covid um social media is one of those we're really worrying that all of those increas ing pressures are increasing the risk on younger people another thing that I asked him about is that obviously a big thing that has happened in the past 12 years since.
The last report came out is social media when I think about the undeniable difference exactly when I think about what has happened in the last 12 years for young people in Australia the top thing I think about is the prevalence of social media and so I asked him if that played a part so we see that Eating Disorders do come from a whole bunch of.
Things so so just as background we know there's genetic risks we know that there's social Factor risks the environment that you're in and um and the people around you and all those sorts of things there's psychological risk factors as well but social media is clearly one of them and one of the things that we're worrying about there.
Is the focus of on body image within social media and so we all hear of the the recent leggings fed for instance other things that are really encouraging people to take an unrealistic perspective on their body and how their body should look and then that's driving towards eating disorder of behaviors but sadly there isn't.
Enough research for us to really say this amount is due to social media this is amount is due to genetics Etc I'm actually not familiar with the legging fad what was that so there was there was a a Tik Tok fad really looking at the profile of someone who was who was wearing leggings and how that was supposed to look and it was a really.
Unhealthy risk and so um I don't want to be talking about it but it's just one of those things where people get pressures on them expecting themselves to live up to some unrealistic ideal and then really hurting themselves in trying to do that so Billy we spent some time talking about the impact that this area of illness has on young women and girls.
Predominantly what about the male population I think that's another thing that has come out a lot in the last 12 years that we predominantly focus on how eating disorders impacts young girls and women but it's absolutely necessary to not forget that this also impacts males so this is another thing I spoke to Dr Hungerford about here's what he said.
There has been an increase in number of young men as well and historically people have tended to focus on females just because of a whole variety of different things but from our point of view we really think there need be a much bigger focus on males and we do see those same body image ideals really impacting on young men's mental health.
As well did you get a sense of how they actually do this research this is something I always think about when a report of this size comes out because obviously they haven't gone out and asked every single Australian whether or not they're currently experiencing an eating disorder I don't know if it's a silly question but something I often.
Such a silly question very true Sam there is no such thing as a silly question so I asked him so it comes from a variety of things so so the two biggest areas are there've been a number of surveys that have been held in Australia and around the world where they've gone out to people and then interviewed them about um their.
Behaviors whether or not they've been diagnosed with a variety of conditions including eating disorders and then um we also have similar statistics that come out of our health system in terms of the number of people who present to hospital or to present to doctors and who get diagnosed with an eaing disorder but you mentioned about um going out and.
Talking to people one of the really critical parts of this report is that we have consulted with people who've got lived experience of an eaing disorder because it is such an impactful condition it really can take over somebody's life so those people with lived experience are actually critical to the report even though the actual.
Numbers come out of much more academic type research one other point that you raised before was about the cost of Eating Disorders to the Australian economy and obviously that cost comes from the health care associated with it take me through what the numbers say in the report about that well it's actually not just the health healthare cost and.
I'll get into that but what I found is that the economic and social cost of Eating Disorders in Australia is $67 billion which is an increase of 36% in the past decade although one thing to note here is that the report does say it's hard to compare directly to that 2012 report because of things like inflation but at a top level it has.
Increased by 36% but what do you mean when you say economic and social costs like how do you quantify the social cost of something yeah so they're two different things and I'll separate them so let's start with the economic cost which is what you mentioned before like the health care cost and other things associated with that that's about $20.8.
Billion and that thingss like I said Health System cost and also productivity losses which means someone's participation in the employment so somebody not working because they're sick exactly we know that if someone has an eating disorder it is harder for them to work at their full capacity but then how's the social cost fit into that yeah.
So they call that the non-financial cost and it talks more about the intangible losses in well-being that someone who is suffering from an eating disorder might experience and that includes lots of different things like someone's reduced quality of life you know people being unable to participate in their favorite hobbies and activities even things like.
Not being able to go to UNI exactly like work it's really hard to go to UNI at your full capacity if you have eating disorder and so they've Associated a cost with that a number with that exactly the report also had one example that I thought was of note they said that one person they spoke to talked about not even being able to adopt a.
Rescue dog because of the financial burden someone's under from having an eating disorder so thinking about all of the ways that an eating disorder impacts someone not just the health care cost associated with it and so if those kind of hard costs if you call them that were worth about 20 billion that means that the social costs are then about 46.
Billion exactly it's $ 46.1 billion and like you said you combine those two costs together and you get a total cost to the economy of about $67 billion and so unsurprisingly the report calls for more Government funding in this space that's not unusual for a landmark report like this what other information is there on how to actually fix the.
Situation yeah so when I spoke to Dr Jim Hungerford and remember he's the CEO of the butterfly Foundation he said so far the funding from the government has focused a lot on responding to people who present to the healthare system with an eating disorder and he said that's absolutely needed but what we need to focus on now is preventative measures.
Focusing on people before they actually get to the point of having an eating disorder here's what he said on that the money that is spent to that is spent by the government and and by Society to support people with eating disorders overwhelmingly is spent in treatment and support so from our point of view it's totally critical for the government to.
Um expend a lot more money into prevention and health promotion activities and it's an area that's been hugely neglected we've got um experience on both of those sides there we've been funded to do some work in schools but nowhere near enough but we've never received funding for health promotion campaigns to really support healthy.
Behaviors and try and prevent Eating Disorders to develop so the report only came out today have we had any political reaction to it I know it hasn't been that long yeah well a group of politic itions from across the aisle have come together as part of the launch of this report today so Susan templeman she is from labor so she's in the government.
Andrew Wallace who's from the liberal party so he's in the opposition and Zoe Daniel who is an independent said in a group statement released today in part thanks to this work we now have up to date significant evidence that sadly shows what we are doing is not enough for every sufferer they went on quote we will bring these findings to the.
Government and ask that they be considered to ensure continual improvements in the life-changing prevention and early intervention efforts that deliver better outcomes for all Australians so that's been the response from the government so far so there's been no formal commitment to anything yet but these politicians again.
From across the aisle and including one government MP have said they will take it to the government and advocate for there to be more funding and there's a budget coming up in May so we will absolutely be keeping our eyes on that you'll be interesting to see how this story plays out even over the next couple of days leading up to you're.
Right that budget where we could expect another significant announcement in this space thanks so much for that Billy and thank you for listening we're a small Independent Media company and the lifeblood of this company is you The Listener so if you can press follow or subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to whether that's Spotify.
Apple or something else it really does mean a lot we'll be back again in your ears tomorrow until then have a good day he
