What Does it Mean to be "Recovered?"

This question comes up from time to time throughout the course of many individuals' treatment. It's a question that does not have a firm answer and that you'd likely get 100 different answers to if you polled a mix of 100 clinicians treating the illness and people who have experienced an eating disorder and who have gone through treatment of any kind.

What The Research Says

Some researchers have defined recovery simply as having "no current symptoms." As with other illnesses, though, the course of most individuals' treatments from their eating disorder involves periods of remission and relapse. So how long does a person have to be without symptoms to be considered "recovered?" Unfortunately, we really do not have an answer to that question.

Predicting an individual's length of treatment from the start to whatever we define as the end, or "full recovery," is very difficult. Treatment length differs widely between individuals given the variation in age of onset, timing of initiation of treatment and types of treatment received, diagnoses, co-occurring mental illnesses, and ability and willingness to access to treatment overtime. And these are just a few of the laundry list of potential variables that might influence prognosis.

There are long-term studies examining long-term outcomes of eating disorder treatment and recovery, but the results are difficult to generalize for a number of reasons. We can only study those individuals who seek treatment. Data collected is usually only from those who seek higher, more acute levels of care, leaving many, many individuals unaccounted who do not or cannot access formal treatment or who do not require this level of intervention. Furthermore, we have limited long-term data on these individuals who are studied. There are a large number of variables to consider when studying and attempting to more narrowly define treatment length and outcomes that make coming to firm conclusions challenging, These include natural variability between individuals, variability in diagnoses and co-occurring illnesses, variability in the modalities (and applications of these modalities) used to treat an individual's illness throughout the course of their treatment, and variability in the application of diagnostic criteria and in how treatment outcomes are defined. The research into answering these questions is ongoing. We are learning more and more all the time.

What we can say with confidence is that early onset of treatment is one of the primary predictors of a quicker path to what we've defined as full recovery.

What An Expert Says

Carolyn Costin, a psychotherapist, an eating disorder expert, and a person who claims to be recovered from their eating disorder, is an authority on this subject. She defined in her book, 8 Keys to Recovery From An Eating Disorder, that a person is recovered when they can say the following: "For a long time now, I no longer have thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to my eating disorder." This statement is still subjective because in so many ways, defining what is means to be "recovered" really is subjective.

What "Recovered" People Say

If you asked around, some individuals will tell you they absolutely never have any thoughts they associate with the eating disorder. Many more will probably tell you they hear their eating disorder thoughts here and there but are able to discard them rather than act on them. As a person who identifies herself as being recovered from her eating disorder, I can tell you that this has been and continues to be my experience after over 15 years of considering myself as solidly in recovery. At this point in my recovery, I do still notice I am triggered from time to time and notice my eating disorder voice, and at times I contemplate re-engaging in my eating disorder in one way or another -- like choosing a lower calorie meal from a restaurant or operating with more rigidity around exercise -- but these little moments are fleeting. I can identify and swat away these thoughts almost immediately, reminding myself what is most important to me and what compromising on my recovery would cost. Re-engaging in behaviors is not truly ever a consideration anymore.

We want to hear from you! Below, comment how YOU would define being recovered.

References

Pike, Kathleen A. (June 1998). "Long-term course of anorexia nervosa: Response, relapse, remission, and recovery." Clinical Psychology Review. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735898000142#aep-section-id45

Costin, Carolyn, Schubert Grabb, Gwen, Rothschild, Babette. (2011). 8 Keys to Recovery From An Eating Disorder: Effective Strategies from Therapeutic Practice and Personal Experience.

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To begin or resume your journey to recovering from an eating disorder, please reach out. We would love to set you up with the provider who is the best match for your needs.

Check back in for our next blog containing a review of several key indicators we (those of us who treat eating disorders) associate with recovery and ways in which recovery looks different from person-to-person.