BackgroundOutcome studies for eating disorders regularly measure pathology change or remission as the only outcome. Researchers, patients and recovered individuals highlight the importance of using additional criteria for measuring eating disorder recovery. There is no clear consensus on which additional criteria are most fundamental. Studies focusing on the perspectives of recovered patients show criteria which are closely related to dimensions of positive functioning as conceptualized in the complete mental health model. The aim of this study was to identify fundamental criteria for eating disorder recovery according to recovered individuals.MethodsA systematic review and a qualitative meta-analytic approach were used. Eighteen studies with recovered individuals and meeting various quality criteria were included. The result sections of the included papers were searched for themes that were stated as criteria for recovery or ‘being recovered’. All themes were analyzed using a meta-summary technique. Themes were labeled into criteria for recovery and the frequency of the found criteria was examined.ResultsIn addition to the remission of eating disorder pathology, dimensions of psychological well-being and self-adaptability/resilience were found to be fundamental criteria for eating disorder recovery. The most frequently mentioned criteria were: self-acceptance, positive relationships, personal growth, decrease in eating disorder behavior/cognitions, self-adaptability/resilience and autonomy.ConclusionsPeople who have recovered rate psychological well-being as a central criterion for ED recovery in addition to the remission of eating disorder symptoms. Supplementary criteria, besides symptom remission, are needed to measure recovery. We recommend including measurements of psychological well-being and self-adaptability/resilience in future research, such as outcome studies and in routine outcome measurement.
Standards for eating disorder recovery, although they originate in life-saving methods, may be unattainable for certain individuals. We used narrative thematic analysis to explore the stories of 10 young women in eating disorder recovery. Participants' narratives highlight the complexity and counter-cultural nature of navigating prescriptions for recovery in a sociocultural context that privileges some bodies and food-related behaviours over others. Our main themes were materiality of eating disorders recovery, beyond biometrics, embodying counter-culture, embodying recovery and authenticity/invisibility. Our analysis reveals a biopedagogy of eating disorder recovery, which offers individuals in recovery sets of instructions for how to be healthy that run in opposition to dominant prescriptions for health. These findings help us better understand the lived experience of eating disorder recovery, highlighting difficulties of recovering in a culture that moralizes food and bodies. Further investigating how standards for recovery intersect with dominant discourses for healthy living could help to support individuals in recovery.
In this paper, we explored the experiences of people in larger bodies seeking fertility and/or pregnancy care through a reproductive justice lens, integrating an understanding of weight stigma with an understanding of who has access to reproductive technologies, who is “allowed” to become pregnant, and the discourses that surround pregnancy. We conducted a thematic analysis of the narratives of 17 participants who had been labeled “overweight” or “obese” while pregnant and/or seeking reproductive health care related to fertility and/or pregnancy. Participants’ narratives speak to experiences of being surveilled and controlled in medical settings; this surveillance and control negatively impacted their access to desired care. In order to receive the kinds of care they wanted, many participants had to become self‐advocates. This self‐advocacy speaks to resistance and “resilience”; we discuss how individualizing “resilience” represents an incomplete solution to navigating the shaming and blaming encounters participants experienced with healthcare providers. We argue for health care that is more caring and responsive to the needs of diverse individuals who are or who are seeking to become pregnant.
In this article, we explore our experiences as researchers and participants in multimedia storytelling, an arts-informed method wherein we work with artists and aggrieved communities to speak back to dominant representations through film. In positioning ourselves as storytellers, we do research with rather than "on" or "for" participants, allowing us to connect in practical and affective ways as we co-create films. Drawing from dialogues about our workshop experiences, we outline four themes that make the storytelling space unique: reflexivity; structure and creativity; transitional space and reverberations; and fixing versus being/becoming with. We analyze our self-reflexive films on mind-body difference as "biomythographies," as films that situate stories of ourselves in technological-temporal-spatial relations and that highlight how we make/experience change through creative research. Multimedia storytelling, we argue, allows us to enact reflexive creative praxis in a way that opens to difference rather than trying to fix it, forging an ethic we find all too rare in the neoliberal university.
Abstract:People who have experienced eating disorders are making sense of and managing their own health and recoveries, in part by engaging with digital technologies. We analyzed 1056 images related to eating disorder recovery posted to Instagram using the hashtags #EDRecovery, #EatingDisorderRecovery, #AnorexiaRecovery, #BulimiaRecovery and #RecoveryWarrior to explore user performances of eating disorder recovery. We situated our analysis in a critical Deleuzian feminist frame, seeking to understand better how users represented, negotiated, or contested dominant constructions of "how to be recovered". We identified a number of themes: A Feast for the Eyes, Bodies of Proof, Quotable, and (Im)Perfection. Within each of these themes, we observed links to social location, including the White, Western, middle-to-upper-class trappings that tether representations of eating disorder recovery to stereotypes about who gets eating disorders and may restrict access to the category of recovered. Documenting recovery online may be a way for those in recovery to chart progress and interact with similar others. However, recoveries presented on Instagram resemble stereotypical perspectives on who gets eating disorders and, thus, who might recover, subtly reinforcing a dominant recovery biopedagogy. These versions of recovery may not be available to all, limiting the possibility of engagement for people enacting and embodying diverse recoveries. Still, users make representational interventions into Instagram by making the struggles and challenges of eating disorder recovery visible to each other and to broader audiences.
Attending to the shades of grey in eating disorder recovery may help to illuminate possibilities for navigating recoveries in their full complexity and diversity. There is a need for more complexity and flexibility in understandings of the timelines, processes, endpoints, and versions of eating disorder recoveries. In this article, we explore eating disorder recovery as a dynamic, intercorporeal, and non-linear process. Drawing on interviews with 20 people doing significantly better than they were during a time of acute distress around food and body, we articulate "recoveries" in relation to four themes: Fuzzy Logics of Time, Not Only Recovered, Recovery is Not All Sunshine and Rainbows, and The Life of Recovery. These themes speak to the ways in which participants struggled to articulate the temporalities of their recoveries, situated recovery as one among many events and processes that shaped their being in the world, resisted "too perfect" articulations of recovery journeys/ endpoints, and described preferredversions of and open-ended guidelines for recovery. We argue that eating disorder recoveries are as complicated and messy as lives themselves and are equally 1 Research carried out while Andrea LaMarre was affiliated with the
The persistence of gender inequality in postindustrial societies is puzzling in light of a plethora of changes that destabilize it, including shifts in economy, legislation, and the proliferation of feminist politics. In family relations, such persistence manifests as a disconnect between couples aspiring to be more egalitarian yet continuing to enact traditional gender roles and hierarchies. There is an emerging consensus that gender inequality persists because of people's continued reliance on sexist ideology or gendered assumptions that constitute women as innately distinct from and inferior to men. Sexist ideology changes its form to accommodate to changing socio-economic conditions. Contemporary forms of sexism are old ways of legitimizing male power articulated in new and creative ways, often by incorporating feminist arguments. To effectively recognize and address "new sexism," scholars and practitioners require new, innovative research frameworks. Our objective in writing this article is two-fold. First, we seek to advance discursive (i.e., focused on language in use) approaches to the study of sexism. Second, we present the results of a discursive analysis of "new" sexist discourse in the context of couple therapy. The study provides preliminary evidence that, despite endorsing egalitarian norms, couples studied continue to rely on gender binaries and remain entrenched in old-fashioned patterns of gender inequality. Implications of these results for the practice of couple therapy and for future research are discussed.
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