Anorexia nervosa claims the highest morbidity and mortality rates of all mental disorders. It is estimated to affect between 1-3 percent of adolescents and young women, and 90-95 percent of those diagnosed with anorexia are female. Once thought to be found exclusively in teenage/young adult white, middle/upper class women, recent studies indicate that the prevalence rate of anorexia is increasing in women of color and all economic backgrounds in the US, in addition to an increased occurrence internationally Of young women and adults who are diagnosed with anorexia, the full recovery rate is estimated at only 33 percent, and the mortality rate is between 5 percent-18 percent. Research to date on anorexia nervosa has been organized into two specific categories. The main body of literature on recovery from anorexia nervosa is demographic and based on physiological determinants of recovery, primarily weight gain and the return of menstrual cycles. The second body of literature is qualitative in nature, and has focused less on physiological determinants and more on psychological insights and turning points reported by individual's who are recovered. Outcome studies indicate approximately one-third of individual's recover fully from anorexia nervosa and go on to live fulfilling lives (Garrett, 1998; Hodges, 1992). Yet, within this subgroup of individual's, the process of recovery from anorexia nervosa is not well understood. Hence, it is this group of individual's that the current study will target, focusing on the processes that move individual's out of an eating disordered lifestyle and into recovery. The proposed study has two explicit aims: 1) To describe and develop a definition and the associated meaning of recovery from the perspective of individual's who have recovered from anorexia nervosa, and 2) To learn how turning points and intrapersonal insights are translated into enduring behavior change in the process of recovery from anorexia nervosa. Approximately 8-12 individuals recovered from anorexia nervosa will be recruited for the study. All participant's will be interviewed twice. To carry out the aims of the proposed study, phenomenology has been chosen as the appropriate methodological approach. Phenomenological research concerns the study of the structure and meaning of human experience from the perspective of the participant's in a study. Interviews, data collection, and analysis will follow a phenomenological methodology and design. Results of the study will inform clinical treatment interventions. No specific treatment modality has been linked with a significant treatment effect. Instead, therapeutic strategies in the treatment of anorexia nervosa are organized around theoretical assumptions concerning individual and family pathology. The movement out of an anorexic lifestyle, however, may be substantially different from the social and personal determinants that cause individual's to enter into an eating disordered lifestyle. Instead of searching for the cause of anorexia nervosa, research focusing on the process and structure of recovery potentially provides a more fruitful path from which clinicians develop treatment interventions and strategies.
| Hardin, Pamela K (2003) Social and cultural considerations in recovery from anorexia nervosa: a critical poststructuralist analysis. ANS Adv Nurs Sci 26:5-16 |
| Hardin, Pamela K (2003) Shape-shifting discourses of anorexia nervosa: reconstituting psychopathology. Nurs Inq 10:209-17 |
| Hardin, P K (2001) Theory and language: locating agency between free will and discursive marionettes. Nurs Inq 8:11-8 |
