Motivation

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.