Chapter 5: The Psychosocial Experiences of Parent Caregivers: Caring for a Son With Anorexia

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a chronic and potentially life-threatening eating disorder (ED) that has a profound impact on both the patient and their family. AN can be protracted, intractable, and has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric disorder (Arcelus et al., 2011; Smink et al., 2012; Thornton et al., 2016). Many adolescents with AN require acute medical hospitalization to address the medical sequalae of progressive malnutrition (Kapphahn et al., 2017). Serious consequences of AN also include functional impairment and psychiatric comorbidity (Mehler & Brown, 2015). Some of the very features that characterize AN (e.g., fear of gaining weight, excessive exercise) often impede recovery and risk of relapse is high (Berends et al., 2018). Given the complex psychiatric, medical, and cognitive features of this illness, parent caregivers and adolescents with AN have described the illness as “taking over” or “consuming” the ill child (Blondin et al., 2019; Sibeoni et al., 2017), resulting in significant distress for both the diagnosed child or teen and their parents.