Most eating disorder treatment centers are full of teen and twenty-somethings. But recently there has been in increase in middle-aged women seeking treatment
for eating disorders.
No one has precise statistics on who is affected by eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia, often marked by severe weight loss, or binge eating, which can lead to obesity. But experts say that in the past 10 years they are treating an increasing number of women over 30 who are starving themselves, abusing laxatives, exercising to dangerous extremes and engaging in all of the self-destructive activities that had, for so long, been considered teenage behaviors.
The recent surge in older women at eating disorder clinics is not a reflection of failed treatment, experts say, but rather a signal that these disorders may crop up at any age. But while some diagnoses, like Ms. Hodgin's, are not made until these women are in their 40s, they may have battled food issues for years.
The Renfrew Center, one of the largest eating disorder clinics, with centers throughout the United States, started a treatment track geared to the 30-and-older set in 2005. The Laureate Psychiatric Hospital in Tulsa, Okla., is about to start a program, too.
Cynthia M. Bulik, director of the Eating Disorders Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said her clinic used to have about one older patient at a time. Now, she said, about half the inpatients are midlife women. And the executive director of the Remuda Ranch Treatment Programs in Wickenburg, Ariz., Edward J. Cumella, said that clinic had had a 400 percent increase in admissions of patients 40 and older since the late 1990s.
"I think the degree of despair we are seeing among adult women about their bodies is unrivaled," said Margo Maine, co-author of The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to Be Perfect (Wiley, 2005). "Eating disorders creep up during periods of developmental transitions, so the peak had been 13 to 15 and 17 to 19 — moving into adolescence and moving into college. Now, we are seeing them again during or after pregnancy and as women hit other life phases, such as empty nesting."
It's unclear whether more women are getting eating disorders as they get older or if more women are seeking treatment these days. But one thing is clear: eating disorders can strike at any age and can wreak havoc on the sufferer's health. That's why getting professional treatment is so important.
