Anorexia recovery looks different for professionals and people with lived experience

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder (ED) marked by distorted body image, intense fear of gaining weight and restriction of food leading to dangerously low body weight (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). It is the mental health condition with the highest mortality rate, potentially due to its high relapse rates (Solmi et al., 2024). As such, understanding factors that can facilitate recovery is paramount to reducing chronicity.

Despite the impact AN is having on our population, there is currently a lack of consensus in how AN ‘recovery’ should be defined, leading to difficulties in understanding factors that may predict relapse and recovery. Previous approaches have defined recovery as a…