Research On Social Support For Eating Disorder Patients In Virtual Communities

Eating disorder is a mental illness with high mortality.In recent years,the number of eating disorder patients in China is growing rapidly,and the onset age tends to be younger.However,due to the lack of scientific knowledge about the disease,the society has not paid enough attention to it,leaving eating disorder patients in an isolated and helpless situation.Therefore,with the development of the Internet,more and more patients seek and obtain social support through the network virtual community.In this research,the eating disorders in the virtual community Baidu Post Bar "Binge-eating Bar" are taken as the research objects.From the perspective of social support theory,text analysis and in-depth interview methods are used to investigate the social support needs and actual social support status of eating disorder patients.By analyzing the interaction pattern of social support that patients received in the virtual community of "Binge-eating Bar" and the types of social support for "Binge-eating Bar",how the online virtual social support extends to the real society is discussed in order to reveal the function and role of the virtual community in the construction of the social support system for eating disorder patients.The study found that eating disorder patients at different stages of illness have different needs for social support.The main need of patients in the early stage is emotional regulation,the main need of patients in the intermediate stage is information consultation,and the main need of patients in the rehabilitation stage is companionship.However,these needs are difficult to meet in the real society.The eating disorders are not only difficult to get family support and social assistance,but also unable to get professional medical treatment.In this case,the virtual community becomes the main place for patients to interact with social support.In "Binge-eating Bar",the interaction pattern of social support is relatively simple,mainly manifested as a star-shaped mode,while the types of conversation behavior and social support are very diverse.The social support mainly includes three categories: information support,emotional support and companion support,each of which includes multiple sub-types.To a certain extent,these virtual social support can meet the diversified social support needs of eating disorder patients,and it is an important supplement to the real social support.At the same time,patients extend the social support to the real society through the two ties of geography and virtual community interpersonal,and the real-world social support based on virtual community interpersonal is more stable than that based on geography.In addition,virtual social support also faces some difficulties in the process of returning to the real society.For instance,the patient’s avoidance psychology restricts the reality interaction,offline social support interaction lacks long-term and professionalism.Therefore,the construction of social support system for eating disorder patients still has a long way to go.