The role of motivation
in the process of recovery from an eating disorder remains in debate within the
therapeutic community. Traditional psychotherapy approaches maintained that in
order for change to occur, the patient must want to change and be motivated to
leave their eating disorder behind. Experts on the other side of the spectrum
maintain that the eating disorder itself makes motivation an impossibility,
particularly at the early stages of treatment when many patients are not
capable of acknowledging they are sick. Because anorexia is ego-syntonic the
individual may never want or seek to make changes and engage in treatment. See
Anosognosia and Ego Dystonic. |