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‘It’s Always About the Eating Disorder’: Finding the Person Through Recovery-Oriented Practice for Bulimia
- Source :
- Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. 44:286-303
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Bulimia is an eating disorder characterised primarily by binging and 'inappropriate' compensatory behaviours, such as purging or excessive exercise. Many individuals with bulimia experience chronic disordered eating, dissatisfaction with treatment, and difficulty establishing a 'new life'. Recovery-oriented practice, which focuses holistically on the person and their own aspirations for treatment, has recently been advocated in the treatment of eating disorders in Australia and other countries. However, questions have been raised about how this practice might be integrated into existing treatment approaches. Taking a social constructionist approach and using a case study of one woman's account, together with literature on patients' treatment experiences, we examined recovery from bulimia. Three themes were identified: bulimia was constructed as 'consuming one's life', an experience protracted through treatment ('treatment and becoming the eating disorder'), which makes life 'beyond treatment and attempting to live without bulimia' challenging. Based on this analysis, we argue that recovery-oriented practice, while seemingly commensurate with patients' needs, may be challenged by long-standing meanings of mental illness and experience of bulimia specifically.
- Subjects :
- medicine.medical_specialty
Health (social science)
Psychotherapist
Excessive exercise
Psychology, Social
behavioral disciplines and activities
Feeding and Eating Disorders
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
mental disorders
medicine
Humans
0601 history and archaeology
Bulimia
Disordered eating
060101 anthropology
Public health
06 humanities and the arts
General Medicine
medicine.disease
Social constructionism
Mental illness
030227 psychiatry
Psychiatry and Mental health
Eating disorders
Anthropology
Existing Treatment
Psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1573076X and 0165005X
- Volume :
- 44
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....0d742ae1cce2c40ede14261ab69af97b