Alison Fixsen
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 174814 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Alison Fixsen |
| NOMBRES | Alison |
| APELLIDO | Fixsen |
| FIRMA | FIXSEN A |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Westminster |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9449-2784 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 17 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 47 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 17 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2012 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Julia E.H. Brown
Paradoxical bio-citizenship
In a society saturated with health messages, the concept of an eating disorder based on an obsession with healthy eating involving pathological behaviours and thoughts- "orthorexia nervosa"- presents a paradox, raising questions about extreme healthism and psychiatry's expanding reach into contemporary life. To explore this matter, we re-analysed data from six existing studies, including 56 interviews (individuals preoccupied with healthy eating;…
‘You Are Not Alone, We’ve Got You’
Healthy eating (HE) and pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) websites are popular sources of dietary and weight loss information, social support, and lifestyle inspiration. However, the discursive styles and language used by authors/moderators and users of these two site genres have not been widely studied or compared. Forty-three HE websites and twenty-four pro-ED websites were analysed using Fairclough's model of critical discourse analysis. Findings i…
Fragile minds, porous selves
This article sheds light on autoethnographic accounts of mental illness, to address author and reader concerns and questions and to consider what practitioners can learn from these narrative accounts. Drawing from my own and others’ trajectories, I discuss the drawbacks and dangers of exposing a ‘flawed’ identity, the stigma of serious mental illness, intertextuality issues, the tangled nature of revelation and redemption, framing the ‘Other’ in …
Battles over 'unruly bodies
Our article offers a critical appraisal of psychiatric medical constructions of eating disorders (EDs) by highlighting the complexity of professional discourses, power plays, claims and counterclaims in ongoing struggles over 'unruly bodies.' Inductive thematic analysis of data from five studies was undertaken, covering thirty semi-structured interviews with UK health-care professionals working in the ED field. Professionals engaged in various st…
I’m Skinny, I’m Worth More
The fashion industry has been critiqued for promoting ultra-thin bodies, yet the relationship between models' aesthetic labor and eating disorder (ED) development is unclear. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, we explored the lived experiences of nine female fashion models including metaphors they used to describe body perceptions and eating behaviors. Four superordinate themes emerged: Shaped for the industry; The body as a market pro…
Arachne, self-care and ‘power-nets’ on women’s self-development programmes
Our article employs a feminist perspective to interpret ethnographic data on soft skills programmes (SSPs) for female staff in Higher Education (HE). We use the story of Arachne as a metaphor for how, under neoliberalism, women are instructed to create local ‘nets of power,’ only to find themselves tangled in a web of conflicting expectations. Our method was informed by Institutional Ethnography (IE). Data incorporated autoethnography, participan…
Supporting Vulnerable Populations During the Pandemic
Social prescribing schemes refer people toward personalized health/wellbeing interventions in local communities. Since schemes hold different representations of social prescribing, responses to the pandemic crisis will vary. Intersectionality states that social divisions build on one another, sustaining unequal health outcomes. We conducted and inductively analysed interviews with twenty-three professional and volunteer stakeholders across three …
Communitas in Crisis
In this article, I use autoethnography to examine time spent on an acute psychiatric ward during the COVID-19 lockdown. I employ the device of "communitas in crisis" to emphasize the precarious nature of this experience and the extent to which, for myself at least, informal social interactions with fellow patients and "communitas" were significant features of my hospital experience and subsequent discharge. I suggest that a lack of emphasis on in…
What are the key features of orthorexia nervosa and influences on its development? A qualitative investigation
How men step back – and recover – from suicide attempts
Men account for three‐quarters of suicide deaths in the UK, yet we know little about how at‐risk men construct their experiences of moving towards – and then subsequently stepping back from – suicide, nor the part played by relational factors therein. An inductive thematic analysis was used to examine narrative interviews with eleven UK men who self‐reported serious thoughts, plans and up‐to and including suicide attempts in progress, but who con…
The Social Construction of a Concept-Orthorexia Nervosa
Our article explores orthorexia nervosa (ON)-an extreme fixation with healthy eating-from a social construction perspective. Interviews with people self-identified as "obsessed" with healthy eating or having ON ("Identifiers") and nonmedical professionals working with ON ("Professionals") were comparatively analyzed, along with orthorexia threads from an eating disorder website ("Posters"). Participants made sense of and rationalized their attitu…
Shades of Communitas
In societies where neoliberal individualism prevails, communal experiences nevertheless remain crucial to human life. Drawing on participant data from a series of soft skills programs (SSPs) for Higher Education (HE) staff, we investigated SSP social worlds, their role in staff navigation in uncertain times and points of resistance within them. We found SSPs to be distinctly performative platforms, engaging actors in various self-care and entrepr…
Stories of Hell and Healing
Benzodiazepines are a group of drugs used mainly as sedatives, hypnotics, antiepileptics, and muscle relaxants. Consumption is recommended for 2 to 4 weeks only, due to fast onset of dependency and potentially distressing withdrawal symptoms. Few peer-review studies have drawn on the user experiences and language to appreciate firsthand experiences of benzodiazepine withdrawal or discontinuation syndrome. We looked extensively at patient stories …
I'm Not Waving, I'm Drowning
Benzodiazepines are group of drugs used mainly as sedatives, hypnotics, muscle relaxants, and anti-epileptics. Tapering off benzodiazepines is, for some users, a painful, traumatic, and protracted process. In this article, I use an autoethnographic approach, adopting the metaphor of water, to examine heuristically my experience of iatrogenic illness and recovery. I draw on personal journals and blog entries and former users' narratives to conside…
"Interaction Rituals and Jumbled Emotions Among "Relative Strangers
Learning games such as role-play (which we refer to as "simulated interaction rituals") are commonly used as social tools to develop trainee health practitioners. However, the effect of such rituals on individual and group participant emotions has not been carefully studied. Using a heuristic approach, we explore the experiences of complementary therapy practitioner trainees (and their trainers) participating in a personal development course. Ten…
Performance, Emotion Work, and Transition
Few researchers have explored the clinical experiences of complementary and alternative medical practitioners and students, including the emotion work they perform. In this article, using a constant comparison approach and a heuristic framework (a dramaturgical perspective), we analyze semistructured interviews with 9 undergraduate practitioners in training to examine challenges experienced when students first attend to patients. A feature of stu…
What are the key features of orthorexia nervosa and influences on its development? A qualitative investigation
The Social Construction of a Concept-Orthorexia Nervosa
Our article explores orthorexia nervosa (ON)-an extreme fixation with healthy eating-from a social construction perspective. Interviews with people self-identified as "obsessed" with healthy eating or having ON ("Identifiers") and nonmedical professionals working with ON ("Professionals") were comparatively analyzed, along with orthorexia threads from an eating disorder website ("Posters"). Participants made sense of and rationalized their attitu…
Stories of Hell and Healing
Benzodiazepines are a group of drugs used mainly as sedatives, hypnotics, antiepileptics, and muscle relaxants. Consumption is recommended for 2 to 4 weeks only, due to fast onset of dependency and potentially distressing withdrawal symptoms. Few peer-review studies have drawn on the user experiences and language to appreciate firsthand experiences of benzodiazepine withdrawal or discontinuation syndrome. We looked extensively at patient stories …
How men step back – and recover – from suicide attempts
Men account for three‐quarters of suicide deaths in the UK, yet we know little about how at‐risk men construct their experiences of moving towards – and then subsequently stepping back from – suicide, nor the part played by relational factors therein. An inductive thematic analysis was used to examine narrative interviews with eleven UK men who self‐reported serious thoughts, plans and up‐to and including suicide attempts in progress, but who con…
Performance, Emotion Work, and Transition
Few researchers have explored the clinical experiences of complementary and alternative medical practitioners and students, including the emotion work they perform. In this article, using a constant comparison approach and a heuristic framework (a dramaturgical perspective), we analyze semistructured interviews with 9 undergraduate practitioners in training to examine challenges experienced when students first attend to patients. A feature of stu…
I'm Not Waving, I'm Drowning
Benzodiazepines are group of drugs used mainly as sedatives, hypnotics, muscle relaxants, and anti-epileptics. Tapering off benzodiazepines is, for some users, a painful, traumatic, and protracted process. In this article, I use an autoethnographic approach, adopting the metaphor of water, to examine heuristically my experience of iatrogenic illness and recovery. I draw on personal journals and blog entries and former users' narratives to conside…
Battles over 'unruly bodies
Our article offers a critical appraisal of psychiatric medical constructions of eating disorders (EDs) by highlighting the complexity of professional discourses, power plays, claims and counterclaims in ongoing struggles over 'unruly bodies.' Inductive thematic analysis of data from five studies was undertaken, covering thirty semi-structured interviews with UK health-care professionals working in the ED field. Professionals engaged in various st…
Shades of Communitas
In societies where neoliberal individualism prevails, communal experiences nevertheless remain crucial to human life. Drawing on participant data from a series of soft skills programs (SSPs) for Higher Education (HE) staff, we investigated SSP social worlds, their role in staff navigation in uncertain times and points of resistance within them. We found SSPs to be distinctly performative platforms, engaging actors in various self-care and entrepr…
"Interaction Rituals and Jumbled Emotions Among "Relative Strangers
Learning games such as role-play (which we refer to as "simulated interaction rituals") are commonly used as social tools to develop trainee health practitioners. However, the effect of such rituals on individual and group participant emotions has not been carefully studied. Using a heuristic approach, we explore the experiences of complementary therapy practitioner trainees (and their trainers) participating in a personal development course. Ten…
Paradoxical bio-citizenship
In a society saturated with health messages, the concept of an eating disorder based on an obsession with healthy eating involving pathological behaviours and thoughts- "orthorexia nervosa"- presents a paradox, raising questions about extreme healthism and psychiatry's expanding reach into contemporary life. To explore this matter, we re-analysed data from six existing studies, including 56 interviews (individuals preoccupied with healthy eating;…
Performance, Emotion Work, and Transition
Few researchers have explored the clinical experiences of complementary and alternative medical practitioners and students, including the emotion work they perform. In this article, using a constant comparison approach and a heuristic framework (a dramaturgical perspective), we analyze semistructured interviews with 9 undergraduate practitioners in training to examine challenges experienced when students first attend to patients. A feature of stu…
"Interaction Rituals and Jumbled Emotions Among "Relative Strangers
Learning games such as role-play (which we refer to as "simulated interaction rituals") are commonly used as social tools to develop trainee health practitioners. However, the effect of such rituals on individual and group participant emotions has not been carefully studied. Using a heuristic approach, we explore the experiences of complementary therapy practitioner trainees (and their trainers) participating in a personal development course. Ten…
I'm Not Waving, I'm Drowning
Benzodiazepines are group of drugs used mainly as sedatives, hypnotics, muscle relaxants, and anti-epileptics. Tapering off benzodiazepines is, for some users, a painful, traumatic, and protracted process. In this article, I use an autoethnographic approach, adopting the metaphor of water, to examine heuristically my experience of iatrogenic illness and recovery. I draw on personal journals and blog entries and former users' narratives to conside…
Stories of Hell and Healing
Benzodiazepines are a group of drugs used mainly as sedatives, hypnotics, antiepileptics, and muscle relaxants. Consumption is recommended for 2 to 4 weeks only, due to fast onset of dependency and potentially distressing withdrawal symptoms. Few peer-review studies have drawn on the user experiences and language to appreciate firsthand experiences of benzodiazepine withdrawal or discontinuation syndrome. We looked extensively at patient stories …
Shades of Communitas
In societies where neoliberal individualism prevails, communal experiences nevertheless remain crucial to human life. Drawing on participant data from a series of soft skills programs (SSPs) for Higher Education (HE) staff, we investigated SSP social worlds, their role in staff navigation in uncertain times and points of resistance within them. We found SSPs to be distinctly performative platforms, engaging actors in various self-care and entrepr…
What are the key features of orthorexia nervosa and influences on its development? A qualitative investigation
How men step back – and recover – from suicide attempts
Men account for three‐quarters of suicide deaths in the UK, yet we know little about how at‐risk men construct their experiences of moving towards – and then subsequently stepping back from – suicide, nor the part played by relational factors therein. An inductive thematic analysis was used to examine narrative interviews with eleven UK men who self‐reported serious thoughts, plans and up‐to and including suicide attempts in progress, but who con…
The Social Construction of a Concept-Orthorexia Nervosa
Our article explores orthorexia nervosa (ON)-an extreme fixation with healthy eating-from a social construction perspective. Interviews with people self-identified as "obsessed" with healthy eating or having ON ("Identifiers") and nonmedical professionals working with ON ("Professionals") were comparatively analyzed, along with orthorexia threads from an eating disorder website ("Posters"). Participants made sense of and rationalized their attitu…
Communitas in Crisis
In this article, I use autoethnography to examine time spent on an acute psychiatric ward during the COVID-19 lockdown. I employ the device of "communitas in crisis" to emphasize the precarious nature of this experience and the extent to which, for myself at least, informal social interactions with fellow patients and "communitas" were significant features of my hospital experience and subsequent discharge. I suggest that a lack of emphasis on in…
I’m Skinny, I’m Worth More
The fashion industry has been critiqued for promoting ultra-thin bodies, yet the relationship between models' aesthetic labor and eating disorder (ED) development is unclear. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, we explored the lived experiences of nine female fashion models including metaphors they used to describe body perceptions and eating behaviors. Four superordinate themes emerged: Shaped for the industry; The body as a market pro…
Arachne, self-care and ‘power-nets’ on women’s self-development programmes
Our article employs a feminist perspective to interpret ethnographic data on soft skills programmes (SSPs) for female staff in Higher Education (HE). We use the story of Arachne as a metaphor for how, under neoliberalism, women are instructed to create local ‘nets of power,’ only to find themselves tangled in a web of conflicting expectations. Our method was informed by Institutional Ethnography (IE). Data incorporated autoethnography, participan…
Supporting Vulnerable Populations During the Pandemic
Social prescribing schemes refer people toward personalized health/wellbeing interventions in local communities. Since schemes hold different representations of social prescribing, responses to the pandemic crisis will vary. Intersectionality states that social divisions build on one another, sustaining unequal health outcomes. We conducted and inductively analysed interviews with twenty-three professional and volunteer stakeholders across three …
Fragile minds, porous selves
This article sheds light on autoethnographic accounts of mental illness, to address author and reader concerns and questions and to consider what practitioners can learn from these narrative accounts. Drawing from my own and others’ trajectories, I discuss the drawbacks and dangers of exposing a ‘flawed’ identity, the stigma of serious mental illness, intertextuality issues, the tangled nature of revelation and redemption, framing the ‘Other’ in …
Battles over 'unruly bodies
Our article offers a critical appraisal of psychiatric medical constructions of eating disorders (EDs) by highlighting the complexity of professional discourses, power plays, claims and counterclaims in ongoing struggles over 'unruly bodies.' Inductive thematic analysis of data from five studies was undertaken, covering thirty semi-structured interviews with UK health-care professionals working in the ED field. Professionals engaged in various st…
‘You Are Not Alone, We’ve Got You’
Healthy eating (HE) and pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) websites are popular sources of dietary and weight loss information, social support, and lifestyle inspiration. However, the discursive styles and language used by authors/moderators and users of these two site genres have not been widely studied or compared. Forty-three HE websites and twenty-four pro-ED websites were analysed using Fairclough's model of critical discourse analysis. Findings i…
Julia E.H. Brown
Paradoxical bio-citizenship
In a society saturated with health messages, the concept of an eating disorder based on an obsession with healthy eating involving pathological behaviours and thoughts- "orthorexia nervosa"- presents a paradox, raising questions about extreme healthism and psychiatry's expanding reach into contemporary life. To explore this matter, we re-analysed data from six existing studies, including 56 interviews (individuals preoccupied with healthy eating;…
Psychology (15 obras) · Social Psychology (11 obras) · Medicine (10 obras) · Sociology (10 obras) · Psychiatry (7 obras) · Eating Disorders and Behaviors (6 obras) · Political science (6 obras) · Eating disorders (5 obras) · Narrative (5 obras) · Psychotherapist (5 obras)