Are recovery stories helpful for women with eating disorders? A pilot study and commentary on future research
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Anecdotally it is well known that eating disorder memoirs are popular with people with anorexia nervosa and recovery stories are readily available online. However, no research to date has empirically explored whether such stories are helpful for current sufferers. The aim of the current pilot study was to explore the efficacy of recovery narratives as a means of improving motivation and self-efficacy and to qualitatively explore patient perspectives of such stories. METHOD: Fifty-seven women with anorexia nervosa and subclinical anorexia nervosa participated in this online study. Participants were randomised to either receive recovery stories or to a wait-list control group. After completing baseline measures, participants read five stories about recovery, and completed post-intervention measures two weeks later. RESULTS: The quantitative results indicated that reading stories of recovery had no effect on motivation and self-efficacy over a two-week period. In contrast, the qualitative results showed that the stories generated thoughts about the possibility of recovery and the majority indicated they would recommend them to others. CONCLUSIONS: This study adds to a growing body of research exploring the integration of voices of lived experience into treatment approaches. Future research should focus on 1) identifying for whom and at which stage of illness recovery stories might be helpful; 2) the mechanism via which they might operate; and 3) the most helpful way of presenting such stories.
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Support via telephone calls or personalised feedback are essential, as studies that utilised such support generated larger effect sizes and had lower drop-out rates than those without such support.
“Alongside these technologies, support via telephone calls or personalised feedback are suggested to be essential, as studies that utilised such support generated larger effect sizes and had lower drop-out rates than those without such support.20”
From Recovery-focused self-help intervention using vodcasts for patients with personality disorder: Feasibility randomised controlled trial (2024) · cites this paper as [20]
The Method > Procedure section describes an emailed recovery-stories intervention, and Results > Test of representativeness discusses drop-out within that study. Neither section compares studies with telephone or personalised support against studies without it. Searches for those forms of support, effect sizes and drop-out rates found no passage making the claimed comparison. (LLM, conf=0.74)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredRecent findings suggest that exposure to recovery narratives may not directly increase motivation to change, or could evoke positive as well as negative responses.
“recent findings suggest that exposure to recovery narratives may not directly increase motivation to change, or could evoke positive as well as negative (e.g. social comparative) responses”
From A randomised clinical trial to evaluate the acceptability and efficacy of an early phase, online, guided augmentation of outpatient care for adults with anorexia nervosa (2020) · cites this paper as Dawson et al. 2018
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- Authors
- Dawson, L., Mullan, B., Touyz, S., & Rhodes, P.
- Affiliations
- St Vincent’s Private Hospital Sydney (AU)
- Curtin University (AU)
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Dawson, Lisa
- Venue
- Journal of Eating Disorders
- Published
- 2018-08-15
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 21-21
- ISSN
- 2050-2974 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6092853
- OpenAlex
- W2885628341
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 2.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Eating Disorders (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- eSpace (Curtin University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Media Influence and Health
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Keywords
- anorexia nervosa, recovery stories, recovery narratives, women, motivation, self-efficacy, lived experience, patient perspectives, online intervention
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