Ethics-testing an eating disorder recovery memoir: a pre-publication experiment

The ED memoir was found not to yield measurably harmful effects for readers with an ED, and will therefore be published. The finding that significant improvement on both quantitative measures was observed irrespective of text condition suggests that positive effects may be attributable to linguistic characteristics shared by the two texts or to elements of the reading and/or reflective processes scaffolded by both. The quantitative results and the free-text testimony have implications for our understanding of bibliotherapy, "triggering", and the practicalities of responsible publishing.