The Master thesis explores how young people in emerging adulthood experience and cope with psychopathology in a peer. It focuses on eating disorders and the major depressive disorder, which in the aforementioned period gravely affect both the individual with the disorder as well as their friends, siblings, and partners. It also sets out to identify prevalent attitudes, find out which type of support is needed by healthy peers in the face of a peer’s mental health problems, and to determine whether there are any differences in the way people experience and cope with both disorders. Using the grounded theory procedure, 12 semi-structured interviews with participants, i.e. healthy peers, were analyzed. The data was organized into 6 main categories with corresponding subcategories, the content of which was used to create the Model of Experiencing and Coping with a Peer’s Mental Disorder in Emerging Adulthood. The Model shows that the friends, siblings, and partners who have a close relationship with the peer suffering from one of the two disorders experience pleasant feelings and emotions, resulting in constructive and prosocial coping styles. They also understand that the peer and the disorder are not one and the same. During episodes featuring severe symptoms, the participants experience negative emotions, which lead to unconstructive reactions to the peer with the disorder. Eating disorders further negatively affect the experience of the family dynamics. The views on the causes and treatments of the disorders indicate a high level of mental health literacy among the participants. The participants primarily stress the role of a supportive and encouraging environment as a safety measure and key factor in recovery. They also support professional psychotherapy. Some attitudes are disorder-specific, e.g. the disapproval of medication use in depression treatment. Furthermore, they express a strong need for support in the form of group therapy, i.e. to be heard by others, particularly mental health professionals. The thesis draws attention to the fact that young people in emerging adulthood who are dealing with a mental disorder in a peer are often overlooked. Many of them spoke about it for the first time. The author of the thesis proposes that support groups and counselling programs be improved and employed more often for the group in question.
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