Why A Book Might Not Save Your Life

Don’t be fooled by popular wisdom — when it comes to eating disorders, books can be just as harmful as other forms of media.

- Francesca Moll

It is a truth seemingly universally acknowledged that the mainstream media can have a negative effect on eating disorders. But what about books? According to Dr Emily Troscianko, of Oxford’s Medieval and Modern Languages Faculty, we ignore them at our peril.

Dr Troscianko, whose research spans cognitive studies and German literature, also writes a blog for Psychology Today based on her personal experience with anorexia and the science of eating disorders. She was inspired to bring together the two sides of her research when she realised how little was known about the relationship between eating disorders and reading.

As part of a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship with TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), she teamed up with BEAT, the UK’s largest eating disorders charity, to find out how these illnesses might affect how people engage with literature, and whether reading could help sufferers adopt more healthy ways of thinking. Together they came up with a comprehensive survey of over 60 questions, assessing how mood, self-esteem, body image and diet and exercise habits were affected by reading. This was filled out by nearly 900 respondents in varying stages of eating disorder recovery, both from BEAT’s UK volunteer network and via sister charities in the US, Canada, and Australia.