René Girard and the Mimetic Nature of Eating Disorders

Recovery from anorexia nervosa: the influence of women's sociocultural milieux

OBJECTIVE

Young women living in industrialised westernised societies have a higher prevalence of anorexia nervosa, partly due to a cultural emphasis on thinness as a beauty ideal. Sociocultural milieux might promote recovery from anorexia nervosa amongst young women. The current article is a commentary about the social influences on recovery from anorexia nervosa - based on social anthropology, narratives of people with lived experience, and clinical studies.

CONCLUSION

Anorexia nervosa increases social withdrawal, and recovery leads to re-engagement with meaningful relationships. Recovery also empowers women as 'cultural critics' who challenge assumptions about the thinness beauty ideal and gender roles. The gradual process of full or partial recovery often occurs during emerging adulthood (aged 20-29). In this life stage, adolescent friendship groups are dissolving as women move from education to work, reducing the danger of weight-based teasing by peers, which is an environmental risk factor for disordered eating. Women recovering from anorexia nervosa may connect with those aspirations of peers and mentors that eschew a focus on weight and shape, but relate to the life-stage tasks of starting careers, beginning new friendships, selecting life partners and family formation - that is, a broader role in larger relationship networks.

The social utility of community treatment orders: Applying Girard's mimetic theory to community-based mandated mental health care

Serious mental illness (SMI) has long posed a dilemma to society. The use of community treatment orders (CTOs), a legal means by which to deliver mandated psychiatric treatment to individuals while they live in the community, is a contemporary technique for managing SMI. CTOs (or a similar legal mechanism) are used in every province in Canada and in many jurisdictions around the world in the care and management of clients with severe and persistent mental illness (most frequently schizophrenia) who have a history of treatment non-compliance and subsequent relapse. Although there is ongoing controversy around CTOs, their use continues to be on the rise. René Girard's mimetic theory, in which he posits the social utility of the scapegoat mechanism, may shed some light on how established cultural patterns contribute to contemporary responses to SMI: how culture depends on the reproduction of certain narratives, and how these act to shape the identity of those involved. The CTO specifically can be seen to act as a scapegoating mechanism, wherein, by singling out and controlling individuals who appear to threaten social order, social order is restored. This paper reviews Girard's theory, looks at how it has been applied to SMI, and then considers how it may illuminate the social role of the CTO. This examination may provide mental health nurses with insight into the constructed identities of their patients, as well as the role of mental health care within broader cultural narratives.