Books, ‘The devoured family’: 4 thousand children die a year from food disorders, Covid drama

Eating disorders represent the second cause of death among adolescents and the pandemic has increased the numbers of an uneasiness that involves more and more families. Anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating are the names of a malaise that has nothing to do only with the body, as it is told in the book ‘The devoured family. Living next to the eating disorder ‘written by the journalist Agnese Buonomo and published by Mursia. Twelve stories written with levity, but capable of weighing on the soul for a long time. Alice, Enea, Sofia, Lorenzo are just some of the boys who struggle or who have not made it against a disease that affects the body but paralyzes the mind. To tell their stories are the parents or siblings forced to deal with a disorder that takes away weight but adds pain and often makes it to the point that almost – between the pages – you have the sensation of touching it. Suffering and hope are intertwined in a simple but effective narrative, in a language understandable to children and that does not discount: there are not only stories with a happy ending because of anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder, as Stefano explains in the preface. Tavilla, president of the association ‘I feed on life’. “In Italy, over 3 million people suffer from these diseases. If we add even one family member to each of them, the numbers double. 10% of the population comes to terms with this tragedy. Diseases that for girls, girls and women, in the range aged between 12 and 25 years, they represent the second cause of death after road accidents. About 4 thousand deaths every year. Too often the family experiences the disease in the darkness and silence of the home, dominated by general ignorance and by little social attention “. A pathology that with the pandemic has had an exponential growth as explained in the interview that closes the book Anna Ogliari, head of the developmental psychopathology service at the Eating Disorders Center of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan. “The official data speak of an increase of 30%. The data is alarming not only in terms of numbers, it is also very important to underline how the age of onset has dropped and cases among males have increased. Behavioral disorders foods usually occur during adolescence, in this last year and a half there has been a significant increase in the pre-adolescent phase, between 10 and 13 years “. Young and very young like the protagonists of the book and families ‘devoured’ by eating disorders, sometimes experienced as a weakness or a whim, which instead require adequate care and structures, which are still insufficient today. “When a daughter or a son falls ill with eating disorder it is as if a monster enters and upsets their lives, the whole family is hit by a tsunami. Nothing exists anymore, everything revolves around the disease. Unfortunately, the whole family is hit by a tsunami. I lived it and I live it firsthand. Anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating are subtle pathologies that drastically transform the mind and body of those who suffer from it. This is why I wrote this book, because we die of eating disorders, but we can also, indeed we must, heal “, explains the author Agnese Buonomo.