Ethical, methodological and personal/professional challenges in ethnography in a public health system for the attendance of eating disorders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

The article discusses the challenges in the ethno-graphic research field work in an ongoing public health service in the city of Rio de Janeiro that offers services to adolescents of both sexes with eating disorders. The research has as investigation central issue the anorexia nervosa publicly recognized, from the search for health care by parents and/or caregivers of adolescents with eating disorders signs and/or suggestive symptoms. This study aims to understand the function dynamics of the elected health service, how the diagnoses are built by the healthcare team, as well as the disease process experienced by users and their sociability relations. To achieve the research objectives, it was necessary to “convert” the nutritionist, who did not have any prior experience in qualitative research, in an anthropologist, as well as addressing the ethical and methodological barriers that permeate the work of an anthropological research in the field of health.