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Group facilitators possess the potential to spur frame transformation and improve support
groups (Snow et al. 1986). The role of facilitators is an implicit theme throughout this analysis.
Group facilitators are key in affirming participants’ assertiveness and teaching participants to
label and express anger. At the same time, leaders contribute to the processes of frame and
disease extension. To make support groups more effective, facilitators might adopt the role of
charismatic leader (Morris 2004) and actively attempt to alter participants’ interpretive
framework and the primacy of the eating disorder as a main component of self. Leaders did
make several such attempts, but succumbed immediately when met with resistance from
participants. Future research on eating disorder support groups might explore means to make
facilitators’ attempts at frame transformation more successful. Such research might also be of
interest to social movement scholars interested in the process of frame transformation more
broadly.
In addition to its practical implications, the results of this research also have serious
theoretical implications. First, we must reframe the debate surrounding self-help as a form of
social movement and source of mobilization. At present, the debate is a simple one. One set of
researchers argues that self-help encourages participants to link personal distress to public issues,
thus encouraging mobilization (Taylor 1996; Taylor 1999). Others argue that self-help does not
encourage progressive change but rather cements a victim mentality, which in turn limits agency
and mobilization (Kaminer 1992; Simonds 1992). Clearly, it is not that straightforward. Rather
than does it or does it not, we must ask under what conditions do support groups and other forms
of self-help encourage mobilization. Groups may possess the potential, but fail to realize,
mobilization. Again, such research might also be of interest to social movement scholars
interested in the conditions that foster mobilization more generally.
The processes of frame and disease extension observed in eating disorder support groups
raises an additional set of questions and topics for future research. First, future projects might
explore whether such processes occur in different support groups, so as to establish their
generalizability. Second, the process of disease extension, and participants’ related identity
transformation, points to a need to explore the role of self-labeling in mental illness (Thoits
1985). Further research is necessary to understand the full impact of identifying as “disordered.”
Scholars increasingly recognize illness narratives as a strategic device, one capable of achieving
specific social ends (Hydén 1997). Without fully understanding frame extension, disease
Convention