Table 2 Participant quotes related to the second theme "Coercive treatment"

"Helping an internal battle" subtheme

"And at other times then, um … well then it is close to somehow having been a help, because then I haven't had to have this eternal struggle in my head about what's right or wrong."

"That it was the only way that it was for my anorexia to say to me, well … you cannot do anything. Now, it's okay that you get food because you don't have the power right now. So, it was really a struggle with myself; that I was expected to take some control, too; and that I should also go against the anorexia. And I just couldn't at that time. So yes, I think it made me a little dependent on having some involuntary treatment around me, because otherwise it wouldn't have been okay to eat at all."

"It … was just like … the tube directly into the stomach and then … you don't have to taste anything, you don't have to smell anything, you don't have to like you know um, take a stand on anything, um. And that, I think, was somehow extremely relieving."

"Augmenting suffering" subtheme

" it is an assault whether it's been done few or many times."

"Well, because it feels like an assault."

"Um … the worst experiences they've definitely been this being strapped tight and then just lying alone."

"Feeling trapped" subtheme

"and it becomes something like an escape, here and now. It is as if it is such a primal instinct that emerges in you. You feel like a hunted animal and you cannot get your more human reasoning into it at all. You resort to that reptile brain, and just feel … you think of ways out and 'escape'. All the time you are hunted somehow"

"So um … she thought I should have a tube on top of this meal that I had already had almost the double of … and then I got really scared, um … so I, um … escaped down to the yard."

"Well, for instance, I try to run past them somehow, and then you are just like hunted down to the other unit or the other end. Not 'hunted', but it feels that way. And then, for instance there is always a table down in shielded [refers to the closed ward] kind of like this one. And then, you know, then maybe I'm standing there, and then two of the staff walk that way and two that way. And then one is standing so you can't jump over the table. So, it like turns into a … hunt."

"I'm close to thinking that it's worse this with there being seven people holding you tight for an hour than it is if you are [mechanically] restrained for an hour … because you just keep going on and on and on fighting back when there are so many people on top of you, um … at least I calm down faster, because I know that those straps, they do not give in, but in principle a human being could (laughs a little), um"

"like the consequence was that if you don't cooperate, um … then it's like yes, um … then you get it [nasogastric tube feeding] anyway, then you're just belt restrained."