The What Keeps Anorexia Going? handout presents key factors that maintain anorexia nervosa (AN).
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
The “What Keeps It Going?” series is a set of one-page diagrams explaining how common mental health conditions are maintained. Friendly and concise, they provide an easy way for clients to understand at a glance why their difficuties persist, and how they might be interrupted.
What Keeps Anorexia Going? is designed to help clients experiencing anorexia nervosa understand more about their condition.
Understanding what keeps anorexia nervosa going is crucial for effective intervention. By identifying these factors, therapists can develop idiosyncratic models of clients' experiences and focus their interventions.
Designed to help clients affected by anorexia nervosa.
Explain to the client that certain difficulties persist due to cycles that maintain them.
Use the handout to discuss what might be keeping the client's difficulties going.
Pinpoint and personalize maintaining factors that are relevant to the client.
Explore how these maintaining cycles can be interrupted.
It is common for people to feel conscious of their eating, but extreme dieting and weight loss can lead to an eating disorder called anorexia (or anorexia nervosa), which may impact their physical and mental health. Symptoms of anorexia include restricted eating, weight loss, and preoccupation with weight, body shape, and eating.
Research has demonstrated that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a helpful psychological therapy for anorexia. CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while the fire is burning they’re not so interested in what caused it, but are more focused on what is keeping it going, and what they can do to put it out. This is because if they can work out what keeps a problem going, they can treat the problem by ‘removing the fuel’ and interrupting this maintaining cycle.
The What Keeps Anorexia Going? information handout describes some of the key factors which act to maintain anorexia, and it illustrates them in a vicious cycle or 'flower' format in which each ‘petal’ represents a separate maintenance cycle. Helping clients to understand more about these processes is an essential part of cognitive therapy for anorexia. Therapists can use this handout as a focus for discussion, or as a template from which to formulate an idiosyncratic model of a client’s experiences.
