Social Support and Anorexia Recovery Online

Abstract

An analysis of an online anorexia recovery message board community was used to develop an understanding of how anorexia patients conceptualize the recovery process, what tangential topics they discuss on the message board, if the community has similar characteristics to those previously marked as effective by previous studies (Barak, Boniel-Nissim, & Suler 2008), and how community members deal with stigma. Through discourse analysis, ideologies were identified from the message board postings collected from the website, eating-disorder.supportgroups.com, over a one month period in 2013. Ideologies are "social systems of ideas, values or prescriptions of groups [and] have the function of organizing or legitimating the actions of the group" (van Dijk, 1998, p. 3). The ideologies identified in the current study demonstrate that recovering anorexics understand recovery as a process and discuss tangential topics in an effort to relate to, and connect with, one another. Also, this study provides evidence that the online community of anorexics dealing with recovery is similar to communities deemed effective by prior research (Barak et al., 2008) and that recovering anorexics make use of various stigma management strategies. Theoretical and practical implications are offered in an effort to improve the anorexia recovery process.