A systematic review: Solutions to problems caused by age transition between eating disorder services

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Adolescent Health
• Eating Disorders

Background:

• Young individuals with eating disorders experience significant challenges during the transition from pediatric to adult healthcare services.
• This transition period is critical and often leads to a loss of specialized care for a substantial minority of patients.
• Existing age-based services present barriers due to differing operational cultures and philosophies.

Approach:

• A systematic review of 17 peer-reviewed articles was conducted.
• Studies were identified through comprehensive searches of PsycINFO, Medline, and SCOPUS databases.
• A narrative integration approach was employed to synthesize findings from the included literature.

Key Points:

• Problematic transitions result in a significant number of young people losing contact with essential eating disorder services.
• Differing service cultures and adversarial relationships between child and adult services contribute to transition difficulties.
• Age-integrated service models are proposed as a potential solution but remain underexplored in the literature.

Conclusions:

• The potential benefits of integrating child and adult services for eating disorders appear to outweigh the challenges.
• Further research, particularly an implementation science agenda, is needed to test the efficacy of age-integrated models.
• Developing and evaluating age-integrated services is crucial for improving continuity of care for young people with eating disorders.