Introduction:Eating disorders (ED) are severe psychiatric disorders affecting mainly teenage girls and young women. There is evidence that family aspects play important role in the etiology and outcome of ED. Aspects related to the patients’ father have been poorly studied.Objectives:To understand emotional experiences and life events of father of adolescent girls diagnosed with anorexia nervosa or bulimia.Method:Qualitative in-depth interviews were carried out with men, fathers of adolescent girls in outpatient treatment at a southern Brazilian general hospital.Results:Sample was composed mostly by men who spent their childhood in the countryside. All of them had lived with their parents at least until the adolescence. Contrary to what clinicians often hear from mothers of ED patients, subjects were concerned about their daughters’ health, wished to see them overcome ED and were well informed about the disorder. They reported that one of the most important events of their lives was their daughter birth. Subjects also reported feeling of powerlessness. They tended to blame the mother for the ED emergence or maintenance, but recognized some relation between the disorder onset and a certain distance in father-daughter relationship. They recognized that their aggressive temper might have interfered with family relationships.Conclusion:Findings may contribute to understand life experiences and emotional characteristics of fathers of ED adolescents and this may help to keep them motivated to the treatment. This understanding can contribute to therapists to help fathers to regain their ability to care for their daughters, getting close to them again and improving father-daughter relationship.
Eating disorders (ED) are severe psychiatric disorders affecting mainly teenage girls and young women. There is evidence that family aspects play an important role in the etiology of ED and influence treatment outcome. Most researches in this field focus on mother, neglecting father figure. The emotional characteristics and life experiences of these men remain little studied. However, some authors have emphasized that father has an important role in emotional problems underlying ED. The objective of this study is to review the literature about life experiences, emotional, cognitive and behavioral characteristics of the father of patients with anorexia nervosa or bulimia. The strategy search used the keywords “Eating Disorders,” “Father-Child Relations” and “Fathers” in the databases PubMed, Lilacs, PsycInfo, Embase and Scopus. It included studies published between 2001 and 2011 in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Studies analyzing the father indirectly, without his own manifestation, were exclude, as well as theoretical studies and researches that considered obesity as a type of ED. It reached 18 articles and only 15 used qualitative method. All articles were read and analyzed. Depression, anxiety, obsessive traits, feelings of guilt and failure were frequently reported by subjects. In 2 studies, we observed parents dissatisfied with their bodies, desiring to be thinner or muscular, without presenting body image distortion. Hostility and authoritarianism in relation to the child were also observed. Rationalization and avoidance coping strategies were the most frequent. No study focused the father through his life experiences. Therefore, this field remains poorly explored by qualitative researchers.
Introduction: The average dropout rates range from 50% and 30% for Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia respectively-a worrying prospect in face of the high mortality in Eating Disorders (ED). Objectives: This investigation aims at understanding the dropout phenomenon in EDs looking at the experience of outpatients to access the symbolic universe of the meanings attributed to dropout. It was assumed that psychological features of the ED are related to the dropout. Methods: Qualitative methodology. The sample composition criteria were: outpatients over the age of eighteen years old once diagnosed with ED according to the criteria of the DSM IV that have dropped out. The sample was closed with nine in-depth interviews according the saturation data criteria. The procedures consisted of audio recording and literal transcription of the data, also reading the records from dropouts and the Field Diary. Ut was used a psychodynamic reference framework. Results: The data was submitted to qualitative analysis regarding categories of content, and the interpretation of results drew upon multiple database review studies, as well as the theoretical framework from humanities, including psychoanalysis. Some categories such as "the disease denied", "under enslavement and vice", "struggling for control: self and other", "abandoning himself", "the importance of the speech" and "the maintenance of symptom" have proved relevant for understanding the phenomenon. Conclusions: The accessed meanings of dropout gave elements to improve the clinical strategies contributing to adherence and retention such as the therapeutic alliance and the handling of transference in treatment for ED.
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