COVID-19 Pandemisinin Yeme Bozukluğu Olan Ergenlerde Bir Yıllık Etkisinin Değerlendirilmesi

Abstract

BACKGROUND:COVID-19 has many effects on both physical and mental health. More information is needed on the effects of the pandemic on long-term eating disorders (ED). This study, as the second part of the study carried out by Hacettepe University Department of Adolescent Health and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the beginning of the pandemic, aimed to reveal the late effects of the pandemic on ED with adolescents diagnosed with ED according to DSM-5, 1 year after the first studymade for comparison with the early period.RESULTS:Thirty-seven (97.3%) of 38 adolescents who participated in the previous study participated in this study. The most common diagnosis was Anorexia Nervosa, and as a result of our study, similar to the first study, 37.8% of the adolescents had an improvement in the ED prognosis/improvement, 83.5% understood how valuable it was to be healthy, 89.5% felt self-conscious, 43.2% of the participants stated that they felt more mature and this situation showed a significant increase compared to the first study, the adolescents stated that the situations that would prevent them from receiving health care services decreased significantly compared to the first study, and that telehealth services were more effective than face-to-face examinations. It was found that the difficulty of not going to school increased significantly compared to the first study, 54.1% of the adolescents did not have newly developing psychiatric symptoms, 62.2% did not experience conflict with their families, and the quality of life of more than half of them improved. In addition, in this study, while no difference was found in the ED prognosis, depression and obsession scores of adolescents, it was determined that anxiety scores increased significantly in the late period.CONCLUSION: As a result of this study, we found that ED symptoms did not worsen both in the early and late phase of the pandemic. We showed that individuals with ED during the pandemic should be evaluated additionally in terms of anxiety and depression in the long term, and that being under surveillance before the pandemic and close follow-up during the pandemic is protective in adolescents with ED.