Carer Outcomes From a Residential Treatment Service for Eating Disorders

Objective: Eating disorders often result in distress, relationship impairment, and emotional, social, and financial burden for family members and other loved ones. However, carer outcomes from eating disorder treatment are under-researched, particularly residential settings. This study aimed to examine carer outcomes from a transdiagnostic residential service for eating disorders, which included therapist-led psychoeducation and peer support for carers.

Method: Measures of carer burden, accommodation and enabling of eating disorder symptoms, psychological distress, and health-related quality of life were completed at pre-treatment and three months' post-treatment by 51 carers (66.7% parents).

Results: Linear mixed effects modelling found significant improvement in carer burden (b = -5.80, p = 0.033), accommodation and enabling of eating disorder symptoms (b = -13.32, p = 0.003), and psychological distress (b = -3.19 p = 0.026), with medium to large effect sizes (d = -0.76-1.32). Averaged across time, women reported significantly greater carer burden than men (b = 12.42, p = 0.011).

Conclusions: Findings support the effectiveness of residential treatment for carers, including improvement in behaviours that are likely to support eating disorder recovery. Future research is needed to determine what elements in residential treatment, the caregiving relationship, and beyond contribute to these positive outcomes.

Trial registration: The study was prospectively registered on the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry in November 2021, registration number ACTRN12621001651875.