Food for Thought: Eating Disorders and the Covid-19 Lockdown- A Questionnaire Based Survey

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Anyone whose eating behaviours tend to cause disruptions and inconveniences in their day-to-day life could possibly have an eating disorder (ED). The coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing lockdown resulted in young people being conned to their homes for months on end. This may have led to the adoption of unhealthy eating behaviours and the consequent development of eating disorders. The objective of this study is to assess the prevalence of eating disorders among healthcare students of South India during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. METHODS This study was conducted for a period of two weeks among healthcare students of South India during the COVID-19 lockdown. The study tools were two pretested and self-administered questionnaires. Analysis was done using IBM Statistics 25 and SPSS. RESULTS The total number of respondents whose SCOFF score was greater than or equal to 2 is 367 (38.3%), which indicates possible cases of anorexia or bulimia. The total number of respondents whose EAT-26 score is higher than 20 in this study are 153 (14.3%), which indicates that they must be referred to a qualied professional to determine if they meet the diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder. This indicates that there was an increased prevalence of eating disorders in the students during the pandemic lockdown. CONCLUSIONS As expected, there was denitely an increased prevalence of eating disorders among the students during the COVID-19 lockdown. Awareness about these disorders must be created via seminars, webinars and workshops.