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Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa

BACKGROUND: Despite common misconceptions, an individual may be seriously ill with a restrictive eating disorder without an outwardly recognizable physical sign of the illness. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the perspectives of individuals who have previously battled a restrict...

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Autores principales: Eiring, Kari, Wiig Hage, Trine, Reas, Deborah Lynn
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8557476/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34717760
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-021-00495-5
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author Eiring, Kari
Wiig Hage, Trine
Reas, Deborah Lynn
author_facet Eiring, Kari
Wiig Hage, Trine
Reas, Deborah Lynn
author_sort Eiring, Kari
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Despite common misconceptions, an individual may be seriously ill with a restrictive eating disorder without an outwardly recognizable physical sign of the illness. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the perspectives of individuals who have previously battled a restrictive eating disorder who were considered “not sick enough” by others (e.g., peers, families, healthcare professionals) at some point during their illness, and to understand the perceived impact on the illness and recovery. Such misconceptions are potentially damaging, and have been previously linked with delayed help-seeking and poorer clinical outcomes. METHODS: Seven women who had recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa participated in semi-structured interviews. Interviews were transcribed and interpretive phenomenological analysis was used. RESULTS: Three main themes emerged: (1) dealing with the focus upon one’s physical appearance while battling a mental illness, (2) “project perfect”: feeling pressure to prove oneself, and (3) the importance of being seen and understood. Participants reported that their symptoms were occasionally met with trivialization or disbelief, leading to shame, confusion, despair, and for some, deterioration in eating disorder symptoms which drove further weight loss. In contrast, social support and being understood were viewed as essential for recovery. CONCLUSION: To facilitate treatment seeking and engagement, and to optimize chances of recovery, greater awareness of diverse, non-stereotypical presentations of restrictive eating disorders is needed which challenge the myth that weight is the sole indicator of the presence or severity of illness.
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spelling pubmed-85574762021-11-01 Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa Eiring, Kari Wiig Hage, Trine Reas, Deborah Lynn J Eat Disord Research Article BACKGROUND: Despite common misconceptions, an individual may be seriously ill with a restrictive eating disorder without an outwardly recognizable physical sign of the illness. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the perspectives of individuals who have previously battled a restrictive eating disorder who were considered “not sick enough” by others (e.g., peers, families, healthcare professionals) at some point during their illness, and to understand the perceived impact on the illness and recovery. Such misconceptions are potentially damaging, and have been previously linked with delayed help-seeking and poorer clinical outcomes. METHODS: Seven women who had recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa participated in semi-structured interviews. Interviews were transcribed and interpretive phenomenological analysis was used. RESULTS: Three main themes emerged: (1) dealing with the focus upon one’s physical appearance while battling a mental illness, (2) “project perfect”: feeling pressure to prove oneself, and (3) the importance of being seen and understood. Participants reported that their symptoms were occasionally met with trivialization or disbelief, leading to shame, confusion, despair, and for some, deterioration in eating disorder symptoms which drove further weight loss. In contrast, social support and being understood were viewed as essential for recovery. CONCLUSION: To facilitate treatment seeking and engagement, and to optimize chances of recovery, greater awareness of diverse, non-stereotypical presentations of restrictive eating disorders is needed which challenge the myth that weight is the sole indicator of the presence or severity of illness. BioMed Central 2021-10-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8557476/ /pubmed/34717760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-021-00495-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Eiring, Kari
Wiig Hage, Trine
Reas, Deborah Lynn
Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa
title Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa
title_full Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa
title_fullStr Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa
title_full_unstemmed Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa
title_short Exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa
title_sort exploring the experience of being viewed as “not sick enough”: a qualitative study of women recovered from anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia nervosa
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8557476/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34717760
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-021-00495-5
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