CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 58Eating Disorders and BehaviorsNutrition, Health and Food BehaviorBody Image and Dysmorphia Studies

“Finding my own identity”: a qualitative metasynthesis of adult anorexia nervosa treatment experiences

Open access
Conti, Janet E., Joyce, Caroline, Hay, Phillipa, Meade, Tanya·2020·BMC Psychology
DOI 10.1186/s40359-020-00476-4PMC PMC7583290
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Background: The aim of this metasynthesis was to explore adult anorexia nervosa (AN) treatment experiences, including facilitators and barriers to treatment engagement and ways that questions of identity and personal agency were negotiated in treatment contexts. Methods: From 14 qualitative studies that met the search criteria, this thematic synthesis analyzed the sensitized concept of identity in the participants’ experiences of AN treatments, including their sense of personal agency, and implications for their recovery. The study was registered with Prospero (ID: CRD42018089259) and is reported according to PRISMA guidelines. Results: Three meta-themes were generated with the following key findings: grappling with identity, where collaborative and tailored interventions were positively experienced; the quality of the therapeutic relationship, which existed in a recursive relationship; and, rebuilding identity that included therapists standing with the person in recovering a sense of identity outside the anorexic identity. Importantly, interventions that failed to be negotiated with the person were experienced as disempowering however, where a two-way trust existed in the therapeutic relationship, it critically empowered and shaped participants’ sense of identity, and broadened the perception that they were valuable as a person. Conclusions: There was consensus across the range of treatment contexts that individuals with a lived AN experience preferred treatments where they experienced (1) a sense of personal agency through tailored interventions; and (2) therapists who treated them as a person who, in the face of their struggles, had skills and capacities in the processes of recovering and rebuilding sustainable and preferred identities outside the AN identity.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1186/s40359-020-00476-4

Cites

66 of 66 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The driven compulsive nature of anorexia nervosa and its inextricable tie to identity can make the idea of life without anorexia nervosa seem unimaginable and out of reach.

    “Coupled with the driven compulsive nature of the disorder and its inextricable tie to identity [27], the idea of life without AN may seem unimaginable, out of reach.”

    From Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined (2022) · cites this paper as [27]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 67 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Conti, J. E., Joyce, C., Hay, P., & Meade, T.
Affiliations
Western Sydney University (AU)
Corresponding author
Conti, Janet E.
ORCID
Venue
BMC Psychology
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2020-10-22
Volume
8
Issue
1
Pages
110-110
ISSN
2050-7283 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1186/s40359-020-00476-4
PMC
PMC7583290
OpenAlex
W3093701956
Cited by
58
References
67
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 7
FWCI
2.70
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • BMC Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
University of Western Sydney (Women's Research Fellowship - Project number: 87630)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
  • Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies
Keywords
anorexia nervosa, adult anorexia nervosa, treatment experience, identity, individual agency, therapeutic relationship, treatment engagement, personalized interventions, recovery, lived experience, disempowerment
MeSH terms
Adult, Anorexia Nervosa, Humans, Qualitative Research

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review