Barriers to eating disorder management and recovery: an exploration of challenging communication interactions through Reddit discourse

Eating disorders (EDs) are considered high-risk health conditions, with one of the highest mortality rates of all psychiatric diagnoses. Despite this risk, recovery and prevention of EDs are difficult to achieve and not widely understood. When analyzing the communicative risk factors that contribute to outcomes related to ED symptomology, messages from parents, peers, and media constitute a tripartite model of influence. However, these communication influences are rarely utilized to create materials to assist in ED recovery. The purpose of this study was to better understand the communication challenges that people with EDs experience and recommend opportunities to develop evidence-based communication interventions. A dataset of 794 posts from five Subreddits related to EDs was scraped to analyze communication challenges. The results illustrate the complex relationship between the ED experience and communication and provide insights into topics of importance to be included in patient education resources.