Instilling hope for a brighter future: A mentor-mentee support program for people with an eating disorder

The below details have been retrieved from a published article – see below: Nicholls D, Fogarty S, Hay P, Ramjan L, 2016, Participatory action research for women with anorexia nervosa, Nurse Researcher, vol 23, no 5, pp 26-30 For pilot 1: Anorexia Nervosa (AN) only. Pre-planning consultations took place with research team members, who consisted of a clinical psychiatrist, two specialist nurses and an allied health clinician before the commencement of the project. Pre-planning allowed for the identification of stakeholders for the study, discussion of potential risk management issues and development of a framework for a workbook to be used at the first workshop. The team considered it essential that a workbook be developed to provide some material structure for the programme. 5 mentors (recovered from Anorexia Nervosa) and 6 mentees (individuals with Anorexia Nervosa) took part in the first pilot. Workshop: The workbook formed the basis for a workshop in which participants would learn about the support programme, and mentors and mentees would form partnerships. To develop the workshop and a workbook for the project, questions were formulated by the research team to generate discussion at the workshop. These questions were only used as a guide, but were needed to gain the views of participants before the workshop’s programme was finalised. This is consistent with Participatory Action Research (PAR), where stakeholder views are canvassed and respected. The questions concerned the following themes: matching of partners, the nature of support, roles and responsibilities, programme interaction, timelines and troubleshooting. The responses to these questions were collated and became part of the workshop. The workshop took place on a Saturday, in a setting simulating a home environment conducive to establishing a warm atmosphere and allaying anxiety. The workshop began with introductions and an ice-breaking activity that focused on individuals’ interests. The group was then divided into sub-groups containing mentors and mentees, to lessen the chance of mentees feeling discomfort or intimidation. Later in the day, the groups were mixed as participants’ confidence grew, with some participants moving places on sofas or sitting on the floor to join different groups during the day. The sub-groups were encouraged to discuss the answers to the questions in the workbook. Butcher paper was used to record the responses. Participants also had the opportunity to express their views about the content and design of a final workbook. A selection of pictures and photographs provided by the research team and participants was shown, with the intention they be included in the final workbook. Participants were given voting slips to rank their preferences for the front cover and inside pages. The images were then incorporated into the design of the final workbook, based on these votes. Along with the images, all the participants’ responses before and during the workshop were collated and emailed to the participants for their final review. Partnerships: As confidence levels increased during the day and they made connections, participants were keen to rank anonymously their preferences for who would be their mentor or mentee. Using a similar ranking system to that used for the images, mentors and mentees separately listed on a form their preferences for partners, from most to least preferred. The research team collected the forms and reviewed them in a separate location, returning to the group with a list of the determined pairings. Each pairing then had the opportunity to spend some time together, discussing their plans for the partnership. In one instance, there was the same mentor for two distinct pairings. Programme Pilot over 3 months: The pairings piloted the programme over a three-month period. The programme was flexible enough that pairings could decide how often/when and how they communicated during the three months. The team stipulated a minimum of 3 face-to-face meetings, average time spent with mentor/mentee each week being approximately 1 hour of communication. The research team stipulated non-negotiables such as mentor is not a counsellor, provision of crisis care contacts and risk management plans. Two of the investigators Dr Ramjan and Dr Fogarty also monitored the partnerships at regular intervals through use of global outcome questionnaires, logbooks received from mentors/mentees, email, and phone conversations. A final celebratory workshop was run at the completion of the program and allowed for evaluation of the effectiveness of the program through focus groups run by an independent facilitator. For pilot 2: any Eating Disorder (ED). The same process took place as above except the number of participants increased to 10 mentors and 10 mentees and they could have any type of eating disorder. Based on feedback from the first pilot, the main difference was the inclusion of greater resources for mentors and mentees to access online during the 3 months and monthly video-conferenced catch-up sessions for mentors only to discuss progress and monthly video-conferenced sessions for all participants to join that focused on topics delivered by qualified experts such as dieticians, nurses, allied health on topics such as ‘body awareness’, ‘nutrition’ etc.