In the same week that fashion heiress Allegra Versace was revealed to be anorexic, Italian dieticians painted a grim picture of a nation where mothers and daughters are both increasingly prey to eating disorders.
Experts at a National Dieticians Association conference in Rome said that a growing incidence of anorexia and bulimia is linked to mothers' desire to resist aging and to young girls' fear of getting bigger.
Anorexia, the potentially deadly obsession with losing weight, is usually seen as a problem which mainly affects females aged between 12 and 25. Official figures say it strikes only 3-5 adolescent girls per 1,000.
But Giovanna Cecchetto, president of the Dieticians Association, said her category is also noticing a wholly new phenomenon - a tendency for women aged 40 or over to become anorexic.
"There is no definitive data yet for the over-40s, because it's a recent phenomenon. But we're noticing an increase in the number of requests for help precisely in this age group and sometimes even after 55 or 60," she said.
"It's often women who can't bear the idea of the menopause arriving because they see it as the beginning of old age," Cecchetto added.
Psychologists say that if a woman in her 40s has a bad relationship with food it is often something that goes back many years and is connected to excessively strict diets that lead women to demonise food.
Anorexia continues to affect adolescents and most experts believe the official figures are much too low because only one in three sufferers seek professional help.
Data released at the Rome conference showed that anorexia is now striking girls as young as eight.
But, according to the dieticians association, bulimia is now the fastest growing food disorder among the young, especially in cities, where it is estimated to affect at least 1% of youths.
Bulimia - a tendency to go on eating binges and then induce vomiting out of a sense of guilt - is seen as the result of 'fast food' culture colliding with the cultural pressure to be thin.
'DIFFICULT TO SPOT'.
"Anorexia and bulimia are linked to a deep interior suffering, but it's difficult for other people to notice until they start to show visible symptoms of the disease," said Massimo Cuzzolaro, professor of psychiatry at Rome's La Sapienza University.
"It's possible that sufferers will get better by themselves but unfortunately that doesn't normally happen," he added.
Anorexia is the mental disease with the highest risk of death. A girl with anorexia is 12 times more likely to die than a healthy one.
It appears that both anorexia and bulimia strike all social classes indifferently.
The 20-year-old heiress of the Versace fashion house has been suffering from anorexia for a number of years, her parents said on Wednesday.
Designer Donatella Versace and her ex-husband, Paul Beck, said Allegra had "been battling anorexia, a very serious disease, for many years".
"She is receiving the best medical care possible to help overcome this illness and is responding well," said the statement.
Prof. Cuzzolaro proposed the introduction in Italy of compulsory hospital treatment for life-threatening anorexia cases, as now happens in Britain.
But he admitted that even this was no real solution to the problem. "Faced with a girl who has decided to let herself die there's nothing you can really do".
