Recovery from anorexia nervosa: the influence of women’s sociocultural milieux

Abstract

Objective: Young women living in industrialised westernised societies have a higher prevalence of anorexia nervosa, partly due to a cultural emphasis on thinness as a beauty ideal. Sociocultural milieux might promote recovery from anorexia nervosa amongst young women. The current article is a commentary about the social influences on recovery from anorexia nervosa – based on social anthropology, narratives of people with lived experience, and clinical studies. Conclusion: Anorexia nervosa increases social withdrawal, and recovery leads to re-engagement with meaningful relationships. Recovery also empowers women as ‘cultural critics’ who challenge assumptions about the thinness beauty ideal and gender roles. The gradual process of full or partial recovery often occurs during emerging adulthood (aged 20–29). In this life stage, adolescent friendship groups are dissolving as women move from education to work, reducing the danger of weight-based teasing by peers, which is an environmental risk factor for disordered eating. Women recovering from anorexia nervosa may connect with those aspirations of peers and mentors that eschew a focus on weight and shape, but relate to the life-stage tasks of starting careers, beginning new friendships, selecting life partners and family formation – that is, a broader role in larger relationship networks.

Loneliness and Absence in Psychopathology

“…Developing or slipping back into patterns of disordered eating can themselves provide comfort and familiarity during times of upheaval. This familiarity is sometimes expressed in terms of a personification of AN itself, with anorectic individuals referring to their disorder as “Ana”: “Unlike other illness categories, anorexia nervosa was transformed from a clinical entity into a friend: it became Ana, a comforter – especially during the early “honeymoon phase” of the disorder (Allison et al 2012 , p. 119). Loneliness, then, can be a trigger for AN.…”

Cutting the cord? Parenting emerging adults with chronic pain

“…The impact of parents on emerging adults with health conditions (eg, eating disorders, 42 cancer, 43 drug use, 44 and diabetes 45 ) has been well‐described, especially in the context of nursing research 21 . Most recent research on emerging adulthood has highlighted the impact of parents on health behaviors in Korean university students during the COVID‐19 global pandemic (eg, following lockdown regulations, social distancing, etc) 46 .…”

Caring for Daughters with Anorexia Nervosa: A Qualitative Study on Parents’ Representation of the Problem and Management of the Disorder

“…In this sense, narrative telling’s are not mere conversational realities, but themselves represent constituents of ongoing and often institutionalized patterns of social conduct [ 19 ]. The narratives of health and illness, both personal and social, are how people make sense of their experiences [ 20 ] and are part of general social relationships and cultural values that characterize a specific life context [ 21 ].…”

“…Narratives are how people make sense of their experiences of illness [ 20 ]. From a cultural and social constructive perspective [ 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ], the ways in which people experience a disease can be understood as an intimate part of the social system of meaning [ 27 , 28 ].…”

“…In this sense, meaning is not attributed to the contents of the world that exist before being interpreted. Rather, sensemaking makes up the reality; namely, the way of presentifying its reality to the mind [ 20 , 31 ]. Therefore, meaning constructs the actual content of the experience of both the external and internal environment (i.e., the experience of the body and feelings of each one), and more generally, the image that individuals have of themselves and their relationships within the context, i.e., their social identity.…”