TEENAGERS who were overweight as children and bullied in the schoolyard are increasingly showing up at hospital with life-threatening eating disorders.

About 40 per cent of teenagers presenting with eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia, at Westmead Hospital, had a heavier-than-normal weight as kids, according to the hospital’s director of adolescent health Professor Simon Clarke.

“We became more aware about three years ago that we were admitting more and more kids who were (previously) obese and overweight who were medically ill,” Prof Clarke said. read more