Attachment and mentalization in anorexia nervosa & community controls
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A comparison of attachment and mentalization in adolescents with anorexia nervosa and community controls
IRAS ID
230417
Contact name
Tom Jewell
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 30 days
Research summary
Family therapy for adolescent anorexia nervosa is an effective evidence based treatment but 20-30% do not respond well and have a poor outcome. Emerging evidence suggests that attachment (the nature of relationships with close others, particularly parents and children) and mentalization (the ability to understand behaviour in terms of mental states such as intentions) may be relevant to treatment outcome. This study aims to answer the following research question: do adolescents with anorexia nervosa differ from community controls in their attachment and mentalizing profiles? This is an important and worthwhile question, since attachment and mentalizing have been researched in adults with eating disorders extensively. However, there has been very little research on these variables in adolescent eating disorder samples, as found in a systematic review conducted as part of this doctoral study (Jewell et al., 2016).
This study will aim to answer this research question by administering measures of attachment and mentalization to adolescents with anorexia nervosa, who will be recruited from two NHS sites (South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust), and healthy adolescent controls, recruited from local high schools in south London.
REC name
London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/1378
Date of REC Opinion
26 Sep 2017
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion