Maternalism: a healthy alliance for recovery and transition in eating disorder services
Abstract
The therapeutic relationship is pivotal to mental health nursing, but very little is known about how it is experienced in adult eating disorder services. This paper reports on a research project that sought to discover how the therapeutic relationship is experienced between care workers and women with anorexia nervosa in an adult eating disorder service. Both care workers and women spoke of a relationship that had similarities to the mother-daughter relationship, that it felt therapeutic and that it was in keeping with a professional and compassionate nursing approach. These findings provide new insight. Maternalism is seen as a positive, nurturing and transient relationship that ensures the safety of the person and promotes recovery and transition to eventual independence. This paper reports on a UK interpretative phenomenological research study that aimed to explore the lived experience of the relationship between women with anorexia and their care workers in the context of a specialist eating disorder (ED) unit. Here, the concept of maternalism as a phenomenon occurring within the therapeutic relationship in specialist ED units is discussed. Consideration is given to the parallel roles of the health care worker whose duty it...Continue Reading
References
Difficulties in treating patients with eating disorders: a review of patient and clinician variables
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Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a psychiatric condition characterized by severe weight loss and secondary problems associated with malnutrition. Here is the latest research on AN.