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Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research

BACKGROUND: Anecdotally it is well known that eating disorder memoirs are popular with people with anorexia nervosa and recovery stories are readily available online. However, no research to date has empirically explored whether such stories are helpful for current sufferers. The aim of the current...

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Autores principales: Dawson, Lisa, Mullan, Barbara, Touyz, Stephen, Rhodes, Paul
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6092853/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30128153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-018-0206-2
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author Dawson, Lisa
Mullan, Barbara
Touyz, Stephen
Rhodes, Paul
author_facet Dawson, Lisa
Mullan, Barbara
Touyz, Stephen
Rhodes, Paul
author_sort Dawson, Lisa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Anecdotally it is well known that eating disorder memoirs are popular with people with anorexia nervosa and recovery stories are readily available online. However, no research to date has empirically explored whether such stories are helpful for current sufferers. The aim of the current pilot study was to explore the efficacy of recovery narratives as a means of improving motivation and self-efficacy and to qualitatively explore patient perspectives of such stories. METHOD: Fifty-seven women with anorexia nervosa and subclinical anorexia nervosa participated in this online study. Participants were randomised to either receive recovery stories or to a wait-list control group. After completing baseline measures, participants read five stories about recovery, and completed post-intervention measures two weeks later. RESULTS: The quantitative results indicated that reading stories of recovery had no effect on motivation and self-efficacy over a two-week period. In contrast, the qualitative results showed that the stories generated thoughts about the possibility of recovery and the majority indicated they would recommend them to others. CONCLUSIONS: This study adds to a growing body of research exploring the integration of voices of lived experience into treatment approaches. Future research should focus on 1) identifying for whom and at which stage of illness recovery stories might be helpful; 2) the mechanism via which they might operate; and 3) the most helpful way of presenting such stories.
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spelling pubmed-60928532018-08-20 Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research Dawson, Lisa Mullan, Barbara Touyz, Stephen Rhodes, Paul J Eat Disord Research Article BACKGROUND: Anecdotally it is well known that eating disorder memoirs are popular with people with anorexia nervosa and recovery stories are readily available online. However, no research to date has empirically explored whether such stories are helpful for current sufferers. The aim of the current pilot study was to explore the efficacy of recovery narratives as a means of improving motivation and self-efficacy and to qualitatively explore patient perspectives of such stories. METHOD: Fifty-seven women with anorexia nervosa and subclinical anorexia nervosa participated in this online study. Participants were randomised to either receive recovery stories or to a wait-list control group. After completing baseline measures, participants read five stories about recovery, and completed post-intervention measures two weeks later. RESULTS: The quantitative results indicated that reading stories of recovery had no effect on motivation and self-efficacy over a two-week period. In contrast, the qualitative results showed that the stories generated thoughts about the possibility of recovery and the majority indicated they would recommend them to others. CONCLUSIONS: This study adds to a growing body of research exploring the integration of voices of lived experience into treatment approaches. Future research should focus on 1) identifying for whom and at which stage of illness recovery stories might be helpful; 2) the mechanism via which they might operate; and 3) the most helpful way of presenting such stories. BioMed Central 2018-08-15 /pmc/articles/PMC6092853/ /pubmed/30128153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-018-0206-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Dawson, Lisa
Mullan, Barbara
Touyz, Stephen
Rhodes, Paul
Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research
title Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research
title_full Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research
title_fullStr Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research
title_full_unstemmed Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research
title_short Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research
title_sort are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? a pilot study and commentary on future research
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6092853/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30128153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-018-0206-2
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