What has struck me, from my humble beginnings almost twelve months ago when my call for participants ended, is just how ‘wrong’ the current one size fits all of research students is.
The more work I’ve done on these stories you guys have sent me, the more it is impossible to set out with certitude and expansive detail in advance what it means to engage in interpretive. It also does not surprise me that some researchers need or want the interpretive work but without the hassle that comes with unfettered interpretation.
My process of working with these texts has been all the better for having been three years in the making, it feels free and tangible, yet can be explored, expressed and talked about. it has a physical form and shape yet is so flexible and responsive I feel as if the ‘analysis’ is being true to my original wont – it is deep exploration without hacking these stories to pieces and turning them into code.
I really, REALLY enjoy it. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever done. I also constantly have ideas of further ED in males research that I want to engage in because I want other opportunities to expand my methodological repertoire whilst holding on to my hermeneutic roots.
I wonder if I’ll still feel like this by December of this year?
This is, of course, my edited elements of my research journal so I only really used it for campaigning in EDAW. However, this morning I took part in a discussion on BBC Radio Tees which was sparked by the news item this week that our MGEDT charity founder, Sam Thomas, took part in (mainly to make sure that the article in the Sun would have some substance).
What I’m keen to point out, and I hope I got this across this morning on the radio, is that these awful terms that proliferate (e.g. Manorexia) create a unique issue for social research. On one hand I find myself cringeing and thinking “as if any serious male eating disorders researcher could take it seriously”, whilst on the other it makes me think it is worth studying.
What I mean here is that, whilst I think the term itself reduces a complex, distressing and potentially fatal life experience to little more than a billboard attention-grabber, how we story out and create language for ourselves can give us insight into the lives we are leading as men in society. If over the coming years this kind of terminology ends up in common parlance, if we find that men begin to define themselves as ‘manorexic’ or ‘boylimic’ then as a social researcher I need to respond to that: to place that language and how we feel about it under a micropscope for scrutiny and further understanding… I see visions of discourse analyses and interpretive phenomenological analysis dancing around my mind.
And then I become worried – I find myself caught up in a Giddens-like double hermeneutic – we are shocked to hear about the rise in eating disorder diagnoses in young men but what if the more awareness raising researchers and campaigners do, the more the society we live in begins to seize upon and live out some of these damaging experiences we were hoping to help address.
So for now, all I can attest, as I did on the radio, is that I hate the term and I know from the stories of the men who have written about their struggles with food control and/or body image that there is far more to the situation than a simple ‘influence from skinny models’ and that people’s demons take many forms that cannot be reduced to a scant news article. Are we seeing a new ‘epidemic’? No, I don’t believe that. Are men being more honest about their issues with themselves and being a man in the 21st century. Then, yes, this is an idea I can get behind.
Tags: Anthony Giddens, BBC Radio TEES, boylimia, discourse analysis, double hermeneutic, eating disorders, interpretive phenomenological analysis, males, manorexia, men, NHS, research
I have been immersed in my interpretive work most of the day again, but I’ve broken off, firstly because I need a break (my eyes are going glassy from close reading and writing), and secondly because I felt the fear rise in my gorge.
I’ve noticed over the last sixth to eight months that I’ve been really trying to engage in this that I spend most of my time approaching my interpretive work (what most research would term ‘analysis’) from a ‘terrified’ place. I’m afeared of it making my own eating disorder kick, worried that I can’t do justice to the stories I have, concerned about the usefulness and rigour of my process and frightened that I’ll end up taking forever to get through this because it’s so time-consuming doing it this way.
I’m not saying any of this amounts to anything but I thought it was useful to journal it out and externalise it more.
Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2012 turned about to be amazing. I wanted to say thank you for some of the kind, empathic and, in some cases, revelatory responses to the series of daily mid-week posts I did. I was very glad that I made the last post more directly personal as this had an enormous impact on people.
Amongst other things I also talked to Radio Tees and to Asian Sunday Newspaper. I know Sam Thomas from Men Get Eating Disorders Too was extremely busy and this has been borne out in some recent news about the charity’s activities.
The following press release can be found on the MGEDT website but I’ve posted it here, too:
Press release
MEN GET EATING DISORDERS TOO CHARITY RECOGNISED AS A ‘HERO’
Mental health organisation www.mentalhealthy.co.uk and national charities SANE, The Mental Health Foundation, The centre for Mental Health and Emergence, have recognised the fantastic achievements Men Get Eating Disorders Too.
Created by Mental Healthy founder Charlotte Fantelli, the Mental Health Hero awards celebrate the incredible achievements of those heroes making a real difference in the lives of those with mental illness.
Categories include ‘Community Hero’, ‘Professional Hero’, ‘Business Hero’ and ‘Creative Hero’ and the shortlist highlights some incredible local, national and even global organisations and individuals. Shortlisted nominees include local organisations and carers, heroes in the field of academia and research, and the list even recognises corporates like Virgin and Lloyds TSB, and celebrities such as Tulisa Constantavlos, Ruby Wax and Stephen Fry.
Judges of the awards include some big names in the world of mental health including Dr Andrew McCulloch, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation, Marjorie Wallace, CBE, founder and chief executive of SANE and Kath Lovell founder of Emergence.
The business awards, which recognise the achievements of businesses who champion mental health are judged by Andy Bell, Deputy CEO of The Centre for Mental Health and Mental Healthy’s very own co-founder and entrepreneur of the year Simon Dolan.
It was announced this week that Men Get Eating Disorders Too has been shortlisted for the Community Hero Organisation category.
Charlotte Fantelli said: “The humbling work individuals and organisations are doing across the globe takes my breath away. Every single shortlisted candidate has done something extraordinary in an area that is not glitzy or glamorous and that takes great strength and human kindness, every one of them is a hero that deserves recognition.”
Sam Thomas, MGEDT Founder and Project Leader, said: “We’re exceptionally pleased that we have been shortlisted in the Mental Healthy Awards. This nomination is a credit to hard work of the volunteers and Trustees.”
The award winners will be announced April 2nd 2012.
For information on the awards, visit: www.mentalhealthy.co.uk/mental-health-awards
ENDS
It’s utterly brilliant just to have been nominated so this is wonderful news. Here’s hoping the rest of the year carries on like as every bit of good news for the charity feels like a step in teh right direction in terms of advancing the campaign to raise awareness of men and EDs,
Today’s post is somewhat confessional. I thought it might be useful to be open and honest and share some of the ‘features’ of my own struggle as it has played out over the years. Maybe you’ll think I’m off my rocker but perhaps it may strike a chord if you are someone who knows another person with disordered eating or if you, yourself, have experienced it:
- At it’s worst I would feverishly binge on dreadful food (bought from the garage just outside where I worked), whilst in my car driving to the gym where I’d teach classes and work out, spending some five hours trying to undo what I’d just done.
- I began eating ‘main meal’ type foods at breakfast-time because I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to eat later on.
- I lost count of how much money I spent on laxatives.
- I ran up entire credit cards, almost all of it on food.
- I had days and sometimes weeks where I felt euphorically high because I hadn’t binged – but I hadn’t eaten either. During these periods I subsisted on small bowls of porridge and ate the odd piece of fruit when I would allow myself.
- I went to see a therapeutic hypnotist to give up eating and became extremely upset when he refused to, during our sessions, suggest messages to me about giving up most food entirely.
- I weighed myself every single day, on a weekend I ended up weighing myself 2-3 times a day if I could.
- It was vitally important to me that I looked as if I ate normally when in company with others; so I did but I felt a strange mix of anguish and desperation that I couldn’t eat as much as I wanted and this often set up a renewed binge-purge response.
- I don’t know everyone who’s reading this out there but if you’re a firend of mine then there’s an enormously strong chance that I stole food from you. Every time I stayed at your house. Lots of it. And then I will have, rather clumsily, satisfied myself that I had covered it up so you wouldn’t notice.
- I have abused my stomach and intestines so much that I have made myself ill for days, wallowing in complete agony. I’ve ended up bleeding from my innards because of laxatives and binged food.
- I have experienced madness and treated people I care about appalling for, literally, no real reason. All because my self-esteem and ability to rationalise were so utterly distorted.
- I have lied and deceived people to hide what has happened to me, then eaten, then starved because of the guilt, then ‘hated’ them for making me feel that way.
- I have spent my last money on staying in alone and eating because that’s all there was in my life: food. Yesterday I spent my last scrap of cash before payday but this time it was on spending an evening with people I love.
There’s plenty more I could write but some of it is too horrible for me to even think about recording here and at least the above might give a small glimpse of the sheer madness that is part of bingeing and purging.
Today’s message: get help. If you are a bloke who has even vaguely been in a similar place with their relationships with food then don’t go it alone. I know very few people who have been able to recover from their disorder in a lone, isolated way. Instead, what you need is love and support and access to professional healthcare services who understand what you’re going through.
Hi once again, my ED nugget today is firmly from a research perspective. In Jones & Morgan’s 2010 paper, where they reviewed the research literature about men and eating disorders, some of what they found was perhaps not remotely surprising, whilst others are a cause for concern and action.
The literature shows that men are overall less concerned about how much they actually weigh, and more concerned about how their body mass looks (for example whether they look muscular or athletically lean). It also suggests that there are commonalities in terms of risk factors and presenting issues – this makes sense, I don’t think anyone would try to claim that eating disorders must be entirely different simply because of the person’s sex.
However, we’re now in the 21st century and still diagnosis is dependent upon historical studies that could only provide data on females. This immediately means that any diagnosis has the potential to be biased (or simply poorly applicable). The authors argue that a “discrepancy” (p.29) is clear and yet little research is being done to focus on males and see what useful diagnostic criteria may be created or revised. It’s one of their final assertions that piques my interest the most:
Socio-cultural constructs of eating disorders have been illuminated by feminist theory, but the lack of equivalent discourse addressing male gender identity has left our knowledge of eating disorders in men aetiolated. (ibid.)
So, we continue to seek to understand how we as human beings make and make sense of our own world – except in terms of EDs in men? That is disappointing given the damage that EDs can wreak when compared with many other mental and emotional health issues. what state is research in today when this very socio-cultural studying has essentially been devalued by our government (particularly when you look at the changes in higher education). How on earth can this problem be resolved if no-one is encouraged to study and theorise (and on the back of this, build interventions) social life. It does, however, give me great faith that I chose a positive path – to look at men and their experiences rather than do comparative studies or quantitative number-crunching.
Reference:
Jones, W.R. & Morgan, J. (2010) Eating disorders in men: a review of the literature. Journal of Public Mental Health, 9 (2), pp. 23-31.
So, on to the 3rd day of Eating Disorders Awareness Week and today I’m writing a snippet about Orthorexia.
Orthorexia has caused mild controversy (in my opinion, at least) as it is not a medically recognised classification and diagnosis. However, when Knight & Bratman’s book is read (Health Food Junkies), it certainly begins to resonate with experiences I have of meeting and working with certain people who have food issues.
In Orthorexia the focus is truly on food quality rather than quantity consumed, avoided or eliminated. it is characterised by somebody’s obsession (and this is the important element, here, the behaviour is obsessive as opposed to being a simple concern or love of healthy eating) with the value of the food they ingest. Alleged Orthorexics would have overriding preoccupations with the nutritional value of their food and the way it is prepared. This can extend to the way it is prepared and its provenance.
Reactions to have the ‘wrong’ food can be extremely severe (a rudimentary, though useful, example might someone who would rather not eat at all than eat something they perceived to not be healthful). What constitutes healthy, permitted food can vary between people experiencing the obsession. It’s suggested that often the obsession can truly dominate someone’s life (a potentially significant problem when many family and friend bonds are formed over or around eating together).
Over to you, then: what do you think of Bratman’s theory? Should Orthorexia be given full recognition as an accepted definition of an eating disorder or related behaviours? Do you know anyone who this might apply to?
Hi again,
It’s the second day of Eating Disorders Awareness Week and here’s another (hopefully useful or informative) nugget.
Pica is, perhaps, one of the lesser known diagnoses which sometimes is thrown into the pot with eating disorders, especially when there is a clear compulsive element involved. Though not specifically defined as an eating disorder alone and is often seen running alongside other mental and emotional issues, in Pica, people may eat items that are non-food substances and have no obvious connection with feeding and nutrition.
Pica has a number of complications: it can belie other, deeper psychological problems; it can result in intestinal trauma due to stomach or bowel damage or blockage; it can be indicative of a severe mineral deficiency or can be a coping mechanism in the management of food intake when it is pathological.
Pica often occurs in animals. However, in humans, it us sometimes an element of specific cultural norms so should not always be viewed as something ‘dysfunctional’, depending upon the context.
It’s easy these days, surrounded by social media and constant access to news and serialised dramas, to forget that my own original eating disorder diagnosis, Bulimia Nervosa, is relatively young. The understanding of it is so sketchy that most of the blokes I’ve interacted with via their texts or in person don’t realise that that’s what they are experiencing.
Gerald Russell first published a paper on Bulimia right at the end of the 1970s. That’s not to say that the behaviours that go with the condition had not been documented previously – just that this was the first time it had been separated from Anorexia Nervosa and explored in its own right.
So, no wonder research lags behind (even now) when identifying it, treating it and managing it is so ‘new’. There are Christmas chart hits that are older, heck, it means that clinical understanding of it is only as old as my younger brother… it’s not like we’ve been studying it for decades!
…20th-26th February.
Many people up and down the country will be fundraising and awareness-raising around EDs this week so it’s worth looking out for what might be going on in your area. I’m committing to a post per day on something research-based (since that’s my thing), some juicy little nugget that I’m just discovering for myself as I work through men’s stories I’m interpreting.
Men Get Eating Disorders Too is very busy during EDAW doing just the above. Check out the website and the social media feeds for more info about we’re up to.
The following are just scattered jottings I have around my journal(s – am now on my second volume). I thought I’d bring them into a single place here so I can find them or see if they turn out to be useful/necessary in future.
- That it is reasonable to want to focus on language, as do many quantitative and qualitative analyses but that is not the core focus of my work because…? Because what? Of course this does not feel OK but it does have to be said out loud – for example it’s not as if my work is not about text and words!!!
- Hart’s tip about writing my future methodology chapter as a positive discussion about what my chosen method offers rather than focusing on what has been set aside due to weaknesses.
- I don’t argue for a relativist position of ‘no reality’ but i do accept that that the reality experienced by my contributors and explored in my work is one of many possible interpretations available and that my own story is the filter which determines which reality is presented.
- In reality, nothing of the interpreter can be shut out or held aside, it can only be minimised through due exploration or incorporated into the interpretive act.
Another short post as I’m shattered have been doing ‘work’ work and have only just swapped to doing some of my PhD.
Goodness my motivation is scant after the events of January. I feel as if I should be out there living life not sitting here theorising about it – but I’m damned if I’m going to let my research go just becuase I’m in a bad patch with things.
So the last couple of weeks, working on interpretation the question that one of my examiners raised has stayed with me and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I’m almost totally convinced now that to ‘stray’ into theoretical considerations about the substance of subjectivity is futile unless it is entirely couched in the need for reflection that my research requires and the actual theory of what concerns me most: interpreting and interpretation.
To this end, while I’ve been trying to let go of the Methodology Chapter I feel as if I’ve already begun writing it in my head so here’s my idea. What I need to do is get firmly written up layers 1 & 2, move much further forward with layer 3 (I’m referring here to my interpretive layers) and then towards Easter when I have some time (ha ha!) I will devote some time to working up some of the issues I want to write out of methodology paper, so that I feel as if I’m writing the chapter cumulatively. I’m worried if I do leave it for eighteen months when I’m writing up some of the ideas flooding around now will have vanished no matter how hard I try to capture them purely in a brain-stormed form.
