Basic family relations in families with a child with an eating disorder

Abstract

The aim of this study is to get to know and describe the Basic Famil yRelations, marital and parental functions, in families with a child with an eating disorder and control group families, as well as determine the discriminative cut-off points of the Basic Family Relations Inventory (BFRI) between them.The BFRI was applied to 688 participants of whom 338 (169 families) formed the clinical group and 350 (175 families) the control group. Results presented statistically significant differences in the scores of marital and parental functions between clinical and control families, being the valuation of both functions lower in the clinical group regarding the control group. In turn, the discriminative cut-off points of 55 for marital functions and 42 for parental functions were obtained between both groups of families. These results suggest that more work is still to be done to improve the BFRI’s empirical evaluative and discriminative capacity of the Basic Family Relations in families with a child with an eating disorder and control families as a relational diagnosis tool are discussed.