Association between social support for mothers of patients with eating disorders and mothers’ active listening attitude: a cohort study

Abstract

Abstract Background Family members of patients with eating disorders, especially their mothers, experience heavy caregiving burdens associated with supporting the patient. We predict that increasing caregivers’ support will have a positive effect on their active listening attitudes, mental health, loneliness, and self-efficacy. This study aimed to investigate differences in mothers’ active listening attitudes, mental health, loneliness, and self-efficacy improvements between mothers who did and did not experience increased perceived social support. Main body Participants were mothers of patients with eating disorders. Questionnaires for this cohort study were sent to the participants’ homes at three time points (baseline, 9 months, and 18 months). The Japanese version of the Social Provision Scale (SPS-10) was used to evaluate social support, the Active Listening Attitude Scale (ALAS) for listening attitude, the UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS) for loneliness, the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) for self-efficacy, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) for depression symptoms, and the K6 for psychological distress. An unpaired t-test was used to determine whether participants’ status differed between the groups that did and did not experience increased perceived social support. The mean age of the participants was 55.1 ± 6.7 (mean ± SD) years. The duration of their children’s eating disorders was 7.6 ± 5.5 years. The degree of improvement for each variable (active listening attitude, loneliness, self-efficacy, depressive symptoms, and mental health) was the difference in each score (ALAS, ULS, GSES, BDI-II, and K6) from T1 to T3. The degree of improvement in active listening attitude and loneliness was significantly greater in the improved social support group than in the non-improved social support group (p < 0.002 and p < 0.012, respectively). Conclusions Our findings indicate that increasing mothers’ perceptions of social support will be associated with improving their active listening attitudes and loneliness.

Keywords

• Caregiver
• Eating disorders
• Social support
• Mother-patient relationship
• Symptoms of eating disorders