Eating disorder is a psychiatric illness which involves irregular eating habits, such as sitomania and anorexia, that result from a psychological discomfort in regards to food intake. These two symptoms have the opposite symptoms; while patients suffe...
Eating disorder is a psychiatric illness which involves irregular eating habits, such as sitomania and anorexia, that result from a psychological discomfort in regards to food intake. These two symptoms have the opposite symptoms; while patients suffering from sitomania experience hyperorexia, which leads to nausea and excessive exercise, those under anorexia restrict their food intakes to unhealthily small amount. It has been reported that more females suffer from this disease than males. Primary causes of the disorder include low self-esteem, lack of self-control and perfectionism on the personal aspect, while on the environmental aspect, the current social atmosphere that idealizes a distorted concept of beauty is accused of being another cause. Patients have tendency to set extraordinarily high criteria out of perfectionism and be easily depressed by their inability to meet these goals, and they lack energy or happy feelings in everyday lives and feel depressed or saddened most of the times. Symptoms such as surreptitious overeating and forced vomiting as compensation for what they have eaten appear notably when the patients experience anxiety and stress. Apart from these medical conditions, the patients also feel guilty, shameful, worthless and miserable after an episode of the eating disorder. As they are reluctant to reveal to others what they are experiencing, they feel more isolated and miserable. Although eating disorder is categorized as “mental” illness, it also has critical impacts on patients’ physical aspects. In particular, female patients in their 10s to 30s account for the largest proportion of the patients and therefore are responsible for a nation’s birth rate. However, a number of patients among them refuse to undergo medical examination and, even if they do, not many has recognized its magnitude.
In relieving the mental and physiological distresses, various kinds of treatments have been proven to be fruitful; clinical treatments, cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodrama and dance/movement therapy are shown to be effective. For the female eating-disorder patients who tend to be highly defensive, Art therapy has been shown helpful for them to relieve tension and anxiety and to express their inner side by using various kinds of art media. This, in turn, lets them reflect themselves, reduce stress, and be invigorated. Among the methods of art therapy, group art therapy enables the patients to step out of isolation and form a bond of sympathy to share their emotions.
In this context, further qualitative studies are required for understanding the experience of female eating-disorder patients. The purpose of this study is to deeply understand the meaning and essence of the experience of the patients through collecting, describing and interpreting the experience. Therefore, the research question is “what experience do the female eating-disorder patients in their 10s to 30s have through the group art therapy, and what are the meaning and essence of it?”
The researcher adopted Max van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenological research method, a qualitative research method that is flexible and useful for grasping the essence of events. The avoidance of other structured templates was for the purpose of accommodating as vividly as possible the various experiences of female eating-disorder patients in their 10s to 30s. The research followed four steps of focusing on the essence of the experience, exploring phenomenological experience, hermeneutic phenomenological reflection and hermeneutic phenomenological writing. These four steps are further specified in eleven procedures.
Participants were 6 females in their 10s to 30s who had received group art therapy four times, once a week, starting from the beginning of the August. After the therapy schedule, in-depth interviews were conducted once or twice (if needed) in hermeneutic phenomenological reflection stage to collect and analyze their art therapy experience. Analyzing those data, this study derived eight essential topics, including <Starting the heart-felt journey to find the answers to my illness> <Becoming nervous in the fear of exposing long-hidden illness of myself>, <Finding out that art therapy was contrary to what I had expected>, <Feeling touched by the rapport with the company of same misery>, <Able to get to know about my appetite through the session>, <Reflecting myself in the communication with the art therapist>, <Finding myself indulged into drawing like I had been while eating>, and <Gradually trying new changes>, which were further divided into twenty-three sub-topics. Based on the results and collected data, the conclusions on the meaning and nature of the experience were presented as follows:
First, the patients had decided to participate in therapy sessions in seeking for the cause and solutions of their disorder and were able to know better about themselves without the pressure of analysis and evaluation, which is on the contrary of their initial expectation.
Second, the patients first worried about exposing their illness that they had long concealed from strangers, but then they felt deeply touched by the experience of reflecting themselves and feeling the sense of connectedness through interactions with other fellow group members and art therapist.
Third, the patients were able to ease their strain while working on the artistic tasks and to feel invigorated. Also, fueled by the hope of overcoming their illness, they have started actively making changes to their everyday lives.
The academic significance of this study can be found in that it deals with the basic role of art therapist regarding the pre-explanation and confidentiality, as well as other aspects such as sympathetic support and non-judgmental attitude that hold much weight in clinical applications of art therapy for female eating-disorder patients. In addition, it provides the foundation to help improve eating disorders by presenting the possibility to guide the female patients to turn attention from their diets to artistic creativity and by investigating how the artistic activities, therapeutic program and methods they prefer have to do with their eating attitudes. It is expected to contribute to clinical art therapy field to provide better treatment to the patients.