Background: Around half of all eating disorder cases start during emerging adulthood (i.e., 18-25 years of age). This is an important time of change in interpersonal relationships, marked by individuation from the family of origin. Interpersonal relationships have long featured in theories of eating disorder maintenance and recovery. Increased understanding of the interplay between eating disorders and changes in the interpersonal domain may be key to improving the efficacy of existing treatments and developing novel interventions for this population group.
Objective: This study aimed to explore experiences of support from family and friends amongst emerging adults with anorexia nervosa.
Methods: A convenience sample of emerging adults who had received specialist treatment for anorexia nervosa in the United Kingdom (N = 10) was recruited via advertisements on social media. Semi-structured interviews were conducted focusing on experiences of support from family and friends during their eating disorder. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.
Results: Five key themes in participants' experiences were identified: (i) feeling isolated and lacking close friends; (ii) resisting involvement of family due to perceiving them as part of the problem; (iii) feeling family and friends' feelings; (iv) desiring flexible boundaries, and (v) feeling ambivalent towards family and friends' lived experience.
Conclusions: Findings suggest a complex entanglement of development of and recovery from AN with the process of individuating from parents during emerging adulthood. Clinicians may find benefit in helping emerging adults to develop their independence and supporting parents to adopt helpful emotional and behavioural postures that tackle the AN maintenance cycle, for example developing parental emotion regulation skills and supporting parents to facilitate age-appropriate levels of independence and responsibility.
Keywords: Anorexia nervosa; Emerging adulthood; IPA; eating disorders; Family involvement; Parents.
Eating disorders are common in young people aged 18 to 25 years old. This is also a time young people start to rely more on friends and partners for support, and less on family. We wanted to know what it was like when support changed in this way for people this age with anorexia nervosa. We spoke to ten such people and recorded what they said. We looked for themes in each interview. We matched these themes with similar themes in other peoples’ interviews.These young people spoke about having few friends and relying on family for support. They told us they felt difficult family relationships was one of the reasons for having an eating disorder. It was important to them for family and friends to remain calm and control their own emotions so that young people could take the lead in their recovery. They told of mixed experiences when their family or friends had their own experience of eating disorders. Some thought this was helpful for their own recovery. Others said this was unhelpful. We hope these findings will help clinicians and policymakers to think about how they can help people with eating disorders get the most out of support from family and friends.
© 2025. The Author(s).