The new data has been published during Eating Disorders Awareness Week which is taking place right now (Monday 24th February – Sunday 2nd March 2025).
The event was founded by Beat – the UK’s leading eating disorder charity – to help raise awareness for individuals suffering.
And suffering they are. Upsettingly, new data from the NHS, which was published today (Thursday 27th February), shows hospital admissions for eating disorders are climbing. According to the statistics, the NHS dealt with 31,751 cases for conditions such as anorexia and bulimia between April 2023 and April 2024 – of those admitted 6,408 cases involved some aged 18 or under.
What’s more, the data also reveals that the total admissions has increased by 11% from April 2022 to April 2023 when hospitals recorded 28,533 cases.
In response to the findings, Lynn Crilly, counsellor, author and filmmaker who specialises in supporting those with eating disorders, is now calling on the government to provide better support.
‘These figures are deeply alarming although, sadly, they are not surprising,’ Lynn said. ‘This data shows how on average, hospitals are dealing with 90 admissions a day. It’s an alarming number of people.’
‘But I’m seeing more and more cases of young people and adults suffering from eating disorders and not being able to get the help and support they need,’ she added.
‘We urgently need to improve the availability of treatment we can offer to people and their loved ones, particularly early on in their diagnosis, otherwise we’re only going to see more and more people going to hospital.’
‘The fact that social media platforms are still flooded with accounts promoting dangerous eating habits shows there is more which needs to be done to tackle harmful online behaviours,’ Lynn continued. ‘We need a complete review and eating disorders awareness week is a great opportunity to look again at how we prioritise these illnesses and make sure we are not failing sufferers and their families as eating disorders destroy the lives of both the sufferers and their loved ones.’
To give context about how damaging some social media platforms can be, Lynn, who has been campaigning for better eating disorder support for the last 20 years, has completed some research of her own.
She discovered one account on X (formally known as Twitter) of which the name will remain anonymous, has 90,000 followers and publishes a post about weight loss every 60 minutes. Likewise on Instagram, she found there were 1.2million posts containing a hashtag often used by ED promoters, which is known as ‘#anarecovery’.
News of these harmful behaviours have come as the government is working to introduce the Online Safety Act – a legislation due to come into force in the second half of this year which puts the onus on social media firms and search engines to protect children from consuming dangerous and hurtful material.
Photo via Shutterstock
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