Original title: Existing in a Battle Zone – The Lived Experience of Adolescents Subjected to Hospital Compulsory Care Due to Severe Anorexia Nervosa
The study asked seven girls about being treated in a hospital against their wishes for severe anorexia. Researchers read and analyzed in-depth interviews to understand what the experience meant to them. The girls described fighting on four fronts: against staff, the eating disorder, other patients and parents. They often felt watched and treated as a disorder, not a person. The researchers say care should support each girl's dignity and help her understand her illness.
Imagine being told to stay home while everyone else decides what you eat and when. It is hard to feel heard when rules and checks take over, even if people are trying to keep you safe. In this paper, that loss of control matches the girls' experience of compulsory hospital care, while the different people and illness they felt they were fighting match the battle on four fronts.
Severe anorexia can require hospital care even when a young person does not agree to it. The interviews show how surveillance, weight checks and supervised meals can leave girls feeling treated as an illness rather than as people, pointing to the need for care that protects dignity and supports involvement.
The abstract reports interviews with seven girls in a Swedish inpatient setting, so it does not establish whether other patients, age groups or care settings would describe the experience in the same way. It explores patients' experiences; it does not report whether the suggested changes to care improve outcomes.
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Existing in a Battle Zone – The Lived Experience of Adolescents Subjected to Hospital Compulsory Care Due to Severe Anorexia Nervosa — Hanna Henningsson, Anna Forsberg, Sophia Eberhard et al. — Child Psychiatry & Human Development — doi:10.1007/s10578-026-02101-8
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.