SINGAPORE: The number of teenagers with eating disorder has increased six-fold since 2002.

The Singapore General Hospital said 140 new cases are reported every year.

But only 10 to 20 percent of them are seeking treatment.

A study of some 1,000 girls across Asia, aged between 15 and 17, shows teenage girls suffer from a severe lack of confidence.

In Singapore, more than eight in ten want to change the way they look, while six in ten feel bad about themselves because of looks or weight.

For 29-year-old Nichol Ng, growing up was like a roller coaster ride on the weighing machine.

She said: "The worst periods started when I was 14 years old, when I'd starve for five days in a row. That's when I started all the not-so-good habits of abusing laxatives, slimming pills, vomiting, binging, starving, and excessive exercising – like walking around the tracks for 30 rounds and things like that.

"Throughout my puberty, I went through those stages. Depression also set in – depression over school work and expectation of people around me. Very obsessed. I weighed myself twice a day. I measured myself every day. I was always comparing myself, and whatever I ate the day before, I made sure that I burned the calories the day after. It became very, very tiring."

Psychologists said teenage eating disorders stem from a lack of confidence or control.

Dr Evelyn Boon, Psychologist, Singapore General Hospital, said: "One of the contributing factors could be that they feel bad about certain things. It could be what they can't control – their family, how they feel about themselves. So in order for them to feel better, they feel that they should control how they are looked at by other people.

"A lot of them have this misconception that being slim is popular. That's one of the more common things we've heard of. The other thing is if they're teased in school about being overweight, they go the other extreme."

According to a study by beautycare company Dove, most Singapore girls start getting into destructive eating behaviours like compulsive eating, throwing up and refusing to eat at an average age of 15 years.

And almost a quarter start dieting even before they are 17.

Dr Lee Ee Lian, Senior Consultant, Psychiatrist, Director, Eating Disorder Programme, Department of Psychiatry, SGH, said: "When a person loses a lot of weight, the brain actually shrinks. Your ability to think, to remember things and your general intelligence actually start to go down."

And one in five Singapore girls would consider having plastic surgery in the future to change their physical appearance.

Singapore girls also seem to have lower self-esteem than their Asian peers.

81 percent said they would miss school, avoid social occasions, or retreat into their bedrooms if they feel insecure about themselves.

This is considerably higher than 72 percent of girls in other parts of the world who report avoidance under these circumstances.

To help girls and young women improve their self-esteem, Dove has launched a fund called the Dove Self-Esteem Fund to support preventive and curative programmes to educate them on the wider definition of beauty and set them on the path to lead healthy, happy and productive lives.


- CNA/so