Food addiction is a behavioral addiction characterized by a cluster of chemical dependencies to specific foods or food in general in which there develops a physical craving for these foods (usually rich in fats and sugars), activating the gratification system. Other feeding and eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, are public health issues increasingly spreading, for their early onset and complex multifactorial etiology.
The experience of the healthcare professionals highlights the importance of providing an early, structured and multidisciplinary intervention for these conditions because, if not treated adequately, they tend to present a subcontinuous and chronic trend, increasing the risk of permanent harm to all organs and systems of the body that, in the most serious cases, can lead to patient death.
The National Centre for Addiction and Doping developed, upon support of the Ministry of Health, the mapping of local health services for the treatment of eating disorders and provides the updates of the eating disorder website piattaformadisturbialimentari. This website reports the local health care services mapping and geolocalization.
