Change processes in day treatment for adolescent anorexia - version 1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Change processes in day treatment for adolescent anorexia: a dyadic interview analysis of the views of young people and their parents.
IRAS ID
242541
Contact name
Amy Colla
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Essex
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
Day programmes for severe anorexia/restrictive eating disorders are a promising alternative to inpatient admissions for young people who do not respond to outpatient interventions. One such programme comprises multiple elements including meal support, family therapy (Maudsley model), individual therapy, and therapeutic groups for adolescents and their parents. Service audits in the host NHS service have revealed positive outcomes in terms of weight gain and discharge to lower-intensity services, but some young people and their families do not have such positive outcomes. This study is a qualitative investigation into the views of young people and their parents/carers regarding the aspects within and outside their day treatment that that impact positively or negatively on outcomes. It aims to find out how families understand changes that occur during this treatment, to improve treatments.
Ten young people and ten parents finishing their treatment in the day programme will be invited to participate; efforts will be made to recruit families with a range of outcomes to learn from families that responded and those that did not. Young people and their parents will be interviewed separately. An interview schedule will be used to guide the interviews – as new themes arise, this schedule will be revised.
Three analyses will be used: thematic analysis of all the adolescent interviews, thematic analysis of all the parent interviews, and dyadic analysis of pairs of adolescent-parent interviews. The latter analysis involves comparing and contrasting the content of paired interviews in order to gain deeper understanding of the individual interviews.
It is hoped that the knowledge gained from this research will inform best practice for day programmes for restrictive eating disorders; it may also be relevant to inpatient wards and outpatient services. It is also hoped that this will inform quantitative research into mechanisms of change in treatment for restrictive eating disorders.
REC name
London - Hampstead Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/0766
Date of REC Opinion
15 May 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion