PC2017: The Era of COVID-19 and Its Impact on an Eating Disorder Program in Qatar

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted individuals with eating disorders. Since the beginning of Covid-19, eating disorder experts and clinicians from across the globe have observed a significant increase in the number and severity of new and pre-existing young people suffering with eating disorders compared to pre-pandemic. The increase of young people with an eating disorder could be attributed to disruptions to their routines, quarantine, and interruptions to treatment. This caused new or an increase in eating disorder thoughts and behaviours such as over exercising, restrictive eating and purging. Not only was there an increase in those diagnosed with an eating disorder, but other mental health disorders too. Previous research suggests that mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, substance misuse, PTSD and suicidal tendencies increase in times of economic instability and natural disasters. Current research has identified that there has been an increase in the rates of depression, anxiety, irritability and inattention among young people since the onset of the pandemic.

Objective: The objective of this study is to capture the extent and nature of eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa in young people through data collection pre-pandemic and during the pandemic in an outpatient setting in Qatar.

Methods: The Eating Disorder program is set in a tertiary care children’s hospital in Qatar, treating patients between the ages of 8-18 years old, diagnosed with either Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa.
Completed outpatient eating disorder assessments were obtained from August 2017 to April 2022 using the DSM-V criteria for Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa as well as other eating disorders in addition to co-morbid depression and anxiety.
In May 2020, the hospital used the hybrid model of clinical care with limited patient face to face appointments to only urgent visits and gradually increased new face to face visits in 2021. For the purpose of this study, August 2017 to March 2020 is considered ‘pre-pandemic’ and April 2020 to April 2022 as ‘post-pandemic’.

We had enrolled all the cases who attended the clinic during the above mentioned time frame

Results: Pre-pandemic 53 adolescents aged between 12-18 years old were assessed and diagnosed with an eating disorder. Out of the 53 diagnosed with an eating disorder, 16 were diagnosed with co-morbid depression and 11 with anxiety. During the pandemic 74 adolescents were diagnosed with an eating disorder and 37 out of the 53 were diagnosed with co-morbid depression

Conclusion: After witnessing an increase rate of eating disorders and co-morbid mental health disorders in Qatar and globally, long term impact must further be examined to prevent a further mental health crisis in the future which will have long term detrimental effects on young people and the already strained health care system in Qatar