Living with someone with an eating disorder: factors affecting the caregivers’ burden

Abstract

We focused on carers of subjects suffering from eating disorders (ED), and studied the characteristics that mostly expose them to high levels of stress, anxiety, depression and expressed emotion, favoring the accommodation of the family system to the cared person. We administered the accommodation and enabling scale for eating disorders (AESED) questionnaire, the family questionnaire (FQ) and the depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21) questionnaire to 97 carers of 62 ED patients, and investigated the carer’s characteristics associated with the scores in the three questionnaires. A personal history of ED, being the primary carer, and caring for a person with a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa are the characteristics that contribute most to aggravate the carers’ burden in terms of stress, anxiety, depression, accommodation and enabling. Our findings may help doctors to provide effective support to caregivers and eventually improve the treatment of subjects with ED.