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Exploratory research on care and control in young women's online eating disorder narratives

Bibliographic Data

ID4217954
AuthorsBethany Hipple Walters (0000-0002-5124-1424, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, corresponding author), Adam (0000-0002-6800-410X, Tilburg University), Samantha Adam, Samantha Adams (Tilburg University, the Netherlands), Tineke Broer (0000-0003-2680-4181, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom), Roland Bal (0000-0001-7202-5053, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
Year2016
Volume20
Issue3
Pages220-241
Publication date2016-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHealth An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1363459315574118
PMID25769694
OpenAlexW2331366318
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited65

Illness narratives have been studied to understand the patient's point of view. These narratives are becoming more prolific, accessible, and specialized, thanks to the improved Internet access and the growth of health-specific online communities. This article analyses illness narratives posted on a Dutch eating disorder website hosted by a treatment centre. Specifically, we look at 'care of the self' and 'control'. The young women wrote about controlling situations with disordered eating as a self-care tool, about being controlled by the disorder and about regaining control over the disorder. The website, with the opportunity for constant, unseen supervision, coercion through comments, and steering through edits and comments, revealed various modalities of control. While issues of control and eating disorders have been explored by others, little work has been done on how the control experienced by the young women (coercion on the individual, the body as the object of control, and the modality of pressure and supervision) interact, how control is presented in stories for a recovery-focused, monitored website, and how the website directs the content. As recovery-focused, therapist-led website is likely to continue growing, understanding how and why young women talk about care and control in the context of such websites is an important topic

Art · Disordered eating · Eating disorders · Health care · Modalities · Narrative · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychotherapist · Social science · Sociology · The Internet · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Eating Disorders and Behaviors · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Medicine · Psychology