In Milan, we are alarmed about eating disorders among young people. According to Sara Bertelli, director of the Center for Nutrition and Eating Disorders at Asst Santi Paolo e Carlo, “since 2020, cases have increased by approximately 20 to 30%.” Nine times out of ten, he adds in an interview with Mail, “these are girls, but there are also boys who suffer from it. Even very young children, sometimes as young as ten years old, turn to clinics specializing in DCA. This is the case of Marta, a 22-year-old biological sciences student who has suffered from anorexia for around 12 years. “The eating disorder made me a perfect liar,” she tells the journalist MailSara Bettoni.
DCA Centers
“For years my mother and friends didn't realize the symptoms, they didn't understand. The first signs appeared in middle school, when my body started to develop, but I wanted to remain a child,” she says. It was her best friend and high school Latin and Greek teacher who brought Marta at the Eating Disorders Center for the first time. Currently, explains director Sara Bertelli, around 400 patients are being treated, with cures lasting on average 5 years. Each year, her center welcomes around 60 to 70 new cases. On average, that's about one more patient per week, despite four requests for help. Marta still remembers the moment when she started to notice the first problems: “I had become very slow to eat. I broke each macaroni in five or six parts, which had to be identical. I interspersed each bite with a glass of water, to calm the feeling of hunger,” says the 22-year-old young man.
The teacher's advice
When his weight started to drop week after week, it was a high school teacher who advised him to go to the DCA center. “I trusted. I felt discovered: the lie no longer held,” Marta remembers. On a scale of 0 to 100, the young girl estimates she reached “60”. And now that he is fully aware of the problem, he already has head what he wants to do in the future: “How will I see myself when I grow up? Nutritionist”.
Cover photo: ANSA/Tino Romano | Demonstration in Piazza Castello, Turin, to demand the application of the law on eating disorders (January 19, 2024)
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