Recovery from disordered eating: sufferers' and clinicians' perspectives.

Objective: Disagreement exists on how to define recovery from eating disorders. Definitions typically include a combination of physical, cognitive, emotional, psychological and social factors. However, none provides multidimensional recovery models, addressing and comparing sufferers' and clinicians' viewpoints. This study investigates those recovery perspectives.

Method: Two-hundred and thirty-eight participants (individuals with eating difficulties and clinicians working in the field) completed a checklist, rating the importance of somatic, psychological, emotional, social, eating-related and body experience-related recovery criteria.

Results: Recovery criteria fell into meaningful factors (psychological-emotional-social, weight-controlling behaviours, non-life-threatening and life-threatening features and evaluation of one's own appearance). Sufferers and clinicians agreed on the ranking of importance of these factors. However, sufferers considered 'psychological-emotional-social' and 'evaluation of one's own appearance' criteria as more important to recovery than clinicians.

Discussion: Findings are discussed in relation to existing research, together with study limitations and future research. Clinical implications are outlined, focusing on the facilitation of recovery.