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. 2022 Apr 19:13:848774.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.848774. eCollection 2022.

Anorexia and Young Womens' Personal Networks: Size, Structure, and Kinship

Oxana Mikhaylova  1 , Sofia Dokuka  1
Affiliations

Anorexia and Young Womens' Personal Networks: Size, Structure, and Kinship

Oxana Mikhaylova et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Anorexia is a serious threat to young women's wellbeing worldwide. The effectiveness of mental health intervention and treatment is often evaluated on the basis of changes in the personal networks; however, the development of such measures for young women with anorexia is constrained due to the lack of quantitative descriptions of their social networks. We aim to fill this substantial gap. In this paper, we identify the basic properties of these women's personal networks such as size, structure, and proportion of kin connections. The empirical analysis, using a concentric circles methodology, is based on 50 ego networks constructed on data drawn from interviews with Russian-speaking bloggers who have been diagnosed with anorexia and write about this condition. We conclude that young women with anorexia tend to support a limited number of social ties; they are prone to select women as alters, but do not have a preference to connect to their relatives. Further research is needed to elucidate whether these personal network characteristics are similar among women with anorexia who belong to different age, ethnic, cultural, and income groups.

Keywords: anorexia; mental health; networks; personal networks; young women.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The social contacts map of participant 2 (translated from Russian). In the center of the map is the blogger herself. In the first circle are people and an animal who she named the most significant to her (her dog, boyfriend, mother, neighbor, and best friend). In the second circle are people she claimed to be less important (brother, friend, sister, and boyfriend’s best friend). The least close to the participant are her father and stepfather. These people are placed in the third circle. She placed no one outside the circles, i.e., this participant did not name people who are not important to her.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Distribution of personal network size (No networks had fewer than four members).
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Distribution of the proportion of isolates in personal networks.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
(A) Distribution of number of kin alters in personal networks; (B) Distribution of proportion of kin alters in personal networks.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
(A) Relationship between average kin and non-kin alter significance; (B) Distribution of average difference between non-kin and kin alter significance.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Distribution of the proportion of non-kin female alters.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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