This qualitative and descriptive study takes the family of patients with eating disorders as a starting point. We aimed to contextualize this theme and apprehend, from the reports of interviewed professionals, their representations about the family of these patients and its influence on the genesis and development of the illness. Data showed that, at first, the family is represented as a primary social group which is always expecting certain behaviors and which, as a formative element, participates in the origin of the disorder. Subsequently, the family theme appears to be more directed to understanding the family as an element that maintains the eating disorder, in which the not very defined limits among its members disturb the relationship, often evidencing an alteration in the hierarchy: the parents start to be controlled by their child.
family; eating disorders; psychiatric nursing
