Economic and social impact of eating disorders

The Butterfly Foundation has published Paying the price : the economic and social impact of eating disorders, in which it reveals that there are more than 913,000 people in Australia with eating disorders in 2012 and that this amounts to a socioeconomic cost of $69.7 billion.

The report estimated that mortality rates are almost twice as high for people with eating disorders compared to the general population, with up to 1828 deaths from eating disorders in 2012 (515 males and 1313 females).  Around 4% of the Australian population have eating disorders and of these, 47% have a binge eating disorder and 64% are female.