Economic Cost of Eating Disorder: Report

Eating disorders (EDs) are serious psychiatric illnesses that have devastating effects on the physical and psychological wellbeing of sufferers. These disorders range in complexity and severity but can be life-threatening without appropriate treatment. EDs are a major social and economic issue, both in Australia and around the world. There is a significant burden of disease associated with EDs and evidence indicates a large treatment gap for these people. This paper focuses on Bulimia Nervosa (BN) and Binge Eating Disorder (BED), disorders characterised by episodes of binge eating occurring at least once a week for 3 months, involving (1) the consumption of an objectively large amount of food in a discrete time frame (e.g. 2 hours) and (2) a sense of loss of control over the food consumption. Although BED was only introduced as a stand-alone disorder in 2013, there has been a six-fold increase in binge-eating behaviour since 1998. As yet, very few studies have been undertaken into the prevalence and health service utilisation patterns of people with these disorders in the community. To close this treatment gap, service planning and delivery strategies need to be underpinned by up-to-date population health information. In order to generate this information this study used questions in the 2017 Health Omnibus Survey (HOS) of South Australians to gather data on the community prevalence, distribution, socio-demographic features, disease burden and costs of EDs, as well as current levels of health service utilisation. This survey data provided a representative, population-level snapshot from which new econometric modelling of costs and disease burden could be undertaken. Costs are considered as: health system costs, productivity costs, transactional costs and out-of-pocket costs.