Practitioners’ perceptions of implementing psychotherapeutic weight loss groups in a culturally diverse, deprived area: working with differences

ABSTRACT

We describe the implementation of psychotherapeutic weight loss groups involving an intuitive eating approach, carried out within a deprived area with a highly diverse population. Challenges to implementation were identified through thematic analysis of data from the group facilitators’ reflexive practice meetings. These challenges included: attending to power processes related to culture and gender, respecting cultural norms around familial eating and ideal weight, acknowledging group participants’ stress, and accommodating group participants’ employment and caring responsibilities. We offer some practice recommendations, highlighting facilitators’ adoption of the non-expert stance, and explicit acknowledgement of differences as well as commonalities. We argue for the need for sensitively tailored psychotherapeutic interventions for weight loss when working with differences among diverse populations in deprived areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Weight loss groups
• intuitive eating
• working with differences
• diversity
• health inequalities

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all those who took part in this study, including group session participants and facilitators. We are also grateful to the anonymous referees whose comments were extremely helpful in revising the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patricia M. Moran

Dr Patricia Moran is a Health Care Professions Council Registered Counselling Psychologist, a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society, and a Registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. In addition to working in private clinical practice, she is a trainer, supervisor, and researcher in mental health and the psychological therapies.

Amanda Bunn

Amanda Bunn is a researcher and practitioner with multidisciplinary experience of designing, delivering and evaluating assessments and interventions. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies, Middlesex University.