Role of Depression and Anxiety in Eating Disorder Symptomatology in Higher Levels of Care for Girls With Anorexia Nervosa.

Population aging poses challenges to welfare states (), prompting increased attention to informal caregiving within families as a strategy to support older adults (; ). While most research on family caregiving in later life has focused on spouses and children as core family members (see ), growing scholarly attention is being directed to individuals who lack a partner (referred to as “partnerless”) or children (“childless”). Older adults who lack both a partner and children are often referred to as “kinless” (e.g., ), although some researchers account for a more comprehensive array of absent kin to define kinless individuals, including siblings (e.g., ) or parents and siblings (e.g., ). In this work, we use the term “core-kinless” to refer to older adults without a partner and children. Older adults without a partner and children face elevated risks of loneliness and social isolation (; ), institutionalization (; ; ), and premature mortality (; ). The primary sources of support for these individuals may lie beyond the conventional nuclear family. Siblings, who are known to provide help and care when needed (; ), may be among the most overlooked potential helpers in this context. Exploring the alternatives for providing help and care to older adults who are partnerless, childless, or core-kinless in Finland is timely for both policy and scientific reasons. Finland is a Nordic welfare state in which relatively extensive public services, including home help and other forms of publicly funded eldercare, are provided, and places primary responsibility for caregiving on the state (). This context has also been described as “less familistic” (), and in such a context, public provision may reduce or substitute for family-based care, potentially limiting the need for kin support. However, rapid population aging in Finland is creating fiscal pressures that may constrain publicly funded care services. People aged 65 and over account for 24% of the adult population (), and their number is expected to double by 2040 (). In practice, the gradual retrenchment of formal support may lead to a growing expectation that families will assume greater responsibility for meeting the care needs of older individuals (). For older adults without core kin, siblings may represent the closest available family members and thus the most likely source of informal support. This study therefore examines whether siblings assume a compensatory role in meeting care needs, even within a welfare state context where formal services remain widely available.