In this editorial to the special collection “Mental Health, Discourse and Stigma” we outline the concepts of mental, health, discourse and stigma as they are examined through sociolinguistic lenses. We examine the sociolinguistic approach to mental health and stigma and discuss the different theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that have been applied in such contexts. Sociolinguistics views mental health and stigma as discursively constructed and constituted, i.e. they are both manifest, negotiated, reinforced or contested in the language that people use. We highlight existing gaps in sociolinguistic research and outline how it could enrich research in psychology and psychiatry and contribute to professional practice. Specifically, sociolinguistics provides well-established methodological tools to research the ‘voices’ of people with a history of mental ill health, their family, carers and mental health professionals in both online and off-line contexts. This is vita.
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Journal of Mental Health
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This article examines how discourses on mental distress are negotiated in mental health practice and their implications for the subjective experiences of psychiatric patients. Based on a Foucauldian analysis of ethnographic data from two mental health institutions in Denmark—an outpatient clinic and an inpatient ward—this article identifies three discourses in the institutions: the instability discourse, the discourse of “really ill,” and the lack of insight discourse. This article indicates that patients were required to develop a finely tuned and precise sense of the discourses and ways to appear in front of professionals if they wished to have a say in their treatment. We suggest that the extent to which an individual patient was positioned as "ill" seemed to rely more on his or her ability to navigate the discourses and the psychiatric setting than on any objective diagnostic criteria. Thus, we argue that illness discourses in mental health practice are not just materialized as static biomedical understandings, but are complex and diverse—and have implications for patients’ possibilities to understand themselves and become understandable to professionals.
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Interpreting in Legal and Healthcare Settings. Perspectives on research and training
This chapter addresses the paucity of interpreter-focused studies in mental health interpreting and presents the voices of spoken-language interpreters reporting on relational, situational and discourse features of the speech of interlocutors with whom they work. Responses from 10 interpreters are presented on pre-interactional contact and briefing, physical configuration of setting, discourse of mental health clinicians, and discourse of mental health patients. Despite guidelines to both clinicians and interpreters, occurrence of a pre-interaction briefing is variable. An equidistant position to other interlocutors is the most common configuration. Descriptions of discourse relate to pace of speech, brevity, clinicians’ alignment with patients, with the physiological, emotional and psychological state of patients listed as challenging features. Code-switching as an unmarked speech variety but also as a conspicuous feature relevant to diagnosis is also reported.
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Research on Children and Social Interaction
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Revista Latino-americana De Enfermagem
The present study aims to get to know the philosophical, conceptual and methodological aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis, as a theoretical-methodological framework for research in the mental health area. Initially, the study presents a reflection on psychiatric discourse in history and at present, with the goal of introducing concepts and presuppositions that would guide the analysis of discursive processes. Discussions are presented about the historical milestones of Critical Discourse Analysis as an analytical framework in social sciences. Finally, the study presents its conceptual and methodological applications to research in the mental health area.
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The term " psychosocial " is mostly used in mental health research to emphasise the role of social and political factors in mental health problems, in contrast to the historically dominant biomedical model; at the same time, the term " psychosocial studies " defines a critical inter-disciplinary approach, theoretically committed to investigate the link between subjective experience and social processes assuming their constant interdependence and vital tension. The notion of psychosocial will be placed at the heart of this symposium, not only in terms of critical and theoretical reflection, but principally for the key questions it raises today regarding models and methods of psychological intervention. First, we will examine two psychoanalytically inflected methods of textual and discourse analysis – i.e., Emotional Textual Analysis (ETA) and Lacanian Discourse Analysis (LDA) – the use of which within psychosocial interventions with social groups, institutions and organisations has engendered meaningful results and new perspectives in mental health. Then, three research contributions using ETA in the context of school education, adult disability and migration, will show how in order to understand mental health problems and risks as well as related demands and evolutive trajectories, it is crucial to re-inscribe them into the increasingly complex dynamics of social coexistence. Contributions: - EMOTIONAL TEXTUAL ANALYSIS (ETA) AND LACANIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (LDA) COMPARED Fiorella Bucci, Katia Romelli - WHAT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCHOOL CULTURE AND DIAGNOSTIC CULTURE IN ITALY NOWADAYS Rosa Maria Paniccia, Felice Bisogni, Alberta Mazzola, Stefano Pirrotta - THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADULTS WITH DISABILITY, THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS AND COMMUNITY-BASED SERVICES: AN EXPLORATORY ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT THROUGH EMOTIONAL TEXTUAL ANALYSIS Felice Bisogni, Stefano Pirrotta - HOSPITALITY FOR MIGRANTS IN A TIME OF GLOBALISATION: A PSYCHOSOCIAL STUDY FOSTERING DEBATE ABOUT COHABITATION AND DIVERSITY Rosa Maria Paniccia, Graziana Di Noja, Francesca Romana Dolcetti
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Social Work in Mental Health
