Punk is a music genre and counter-culture that has provided community and empowerment to generations of traumatized youth. This article is a case study on the use of punk rock counter-culture through ...the expression of music as a critical social work practice within a psychiatric outpatient clinic. The clinic, Lane County Behavioral Health, was founded during the deinstitutionalization era of psychiatric care for the treatment of “severe and persistent mental illness.” The article describes the formation of the group, the shared personal and cultural history of the therapist with group members, and the critical engagement with psychiatric violence generated through the composition of punk music. In this, the process of composition and the lyrical content of four songs are provided. Each of these four songs demonstrate a connection of the personal experiences of psychiatric violence to a political protest against psychiatric violence. While the article focuses on the experience of punks in the psychiatric clinic, the implementation of relationality and personal-political experience are applicable beyond the punk counter-culture. The article concludes with discussion elaborating ways in which a relational analytic group can be implemented within tight knit counter-cultural communities.
In the following, I explore the idea of psychology as a science in Barbara Held’s (2020) reading of Thomas Teo’s (and Klaus Holzkamp’s) distinction of research for and from versus about people. Held ...argues convincingly that research about people entails aspects for people and vice versa. In her view, to equate mainstream psychology research with research from above and critical/Indigenous research with research from below is an oversimplification. She concludes that Teo’s distinction is fuzzy and thus exhibits limited applicability. I want to argue that Teo’s distinction is useful in a political sense and under the premise of research from the standpoint of the subject.
This paper explores students' and recent graduates' experience of boundary-crossing in an internship. It draws on the dialogical approach to focus group to show how young people's reflections on ...their internship experience suggest the importance of their identity project. In particular, the paper argues that interns' identity projects can be seen as semiotic resources that are (i) articulated, refined or enhanced through internship experience and (ii) driving future cycles of boundary crossing by shaping their plans for the future. The interns' identity project is, on one hand, consequential or emerges from past activities and integrates preference, values and commitments into a coherent narrative whole. On the other hand, the identity project informs plans, preferences and orientations to future and shapes how young people create their professional and personal trajectories.
Although the psychologist's own emotional management is an integral part of psychological therapy, it is often assumed rather than discussed; the “feeling rules” for the profession are unarticulated. ...This research explores psychologists' accounts of emoting within the therapeutic relationship to explore the profession's norms and expectations for emotional expression and to look critically at their function. We use the affective practice theory of emotion to consider how emotions come to be patterned within the frames set by the occupational identity of the psychologist. Through analysing transcripts from interviews with practicing psychologists, we produce accounts of three interpretative repertoires and associated subject positions. We consider how psychologists have come to construct their emotions in dilemmatic ways and how this construction of emotions is part of what demarcates them as a social group.
This book reflects and analyses the working of power in the field of global health– and what this goes on to produce. In so doing, Rethinking Global Health asks the pivotal questions of, ‘who is ...global health for’ and ‘what is it that limits our ability to build responses that meet people where they are?’ Covering a wide range of topics from global mental health to Ebola, this book combines power analyses with interviews and personal reflections spanning the author’s decade-long career in global health. It interrogates how the search for global solutions can often end up far from where we anticipated. It also introduces readers to different frameworks for power analyses in the field, including an adaptation of the ‘matrix of domination’ for global health practice. Through this work, Dr Burgess develops a new model of Transformative Global Health, a framework that calls researchers and practitioners to adopt new orienting principles, placing community interests and voices at the heart of global health planning and solutions at all times. This book will be beneficial to students and academics working in the global and public health landscape. It will also hold appeal to activists, practitioners and individuals invested in the discipline and in health equity around the world.
The concept of schizophrenia has been contested since its inception. Over the last decades, criticism of the concept has become increasingly mainstream and calls for its abandonment have intensified. ...Nevertheless, the concept remains widely used and retains taken-for-granted status within much mental health research and practice. The combination of its contested status and continued use raises questions about how it is used and with what implications for people who receive the diagnosis.
This study explores how 'schizophrenia' is spoken about by mental health professionals who use the diagnosis in day-to-day practice. Eight interviews with professionals across professions were analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis.
Two striking and consistent themes were identified. The first is a discrepancy between the way participants talked about 'schizophrenia' to the interviewer, and the way they described talking about it in clinical encounters. The second is the potentially entrapping impact of the wider discourses participants drew on in talk about clinical encounters.
The study concludes with reflections on how those working in the mental health field can break out of this discursive entrapment, and help the people they work with do the same.
To investigate specialist clinicians' experiences of treating vaginal agenesis.
Semi-structured interviews.
Twelve hospitals in Britain and Sweden.
Thirty-two health professionals connected to ...multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) including medical specialists and psychologists.
Theoretical thematic analysis of recorded verbatim data.
The gynecologist and psychologist interviewees share certain observations including the importance of psychological readiness for and appropriate timing of treatment. Three overlapping themes are identified in our theoretical analysis of the MDT clinicians' talk: (1) the stigma of vaginal agenesis and the pressure to be “normal” can lead patients to minimize the time, effort, physical discomfort, and emotional cost inherent in treatment. (2) Under pressure, treatment might be presented to patients with insufficient attention to the potential psychological effect of the language used. Furthermore, the opportunity to question what is “normal” in sex is generally not taken up. It can be challenging to help the women to transcend their medicalized experiences to come to experiencing their bodies as sexual and enjoyable. (3) The reality of treatment demands, which are not always adequately processed before treatment, can lead to discontinuation and even disengagement with services.
The MDT clinicians in this study emphasized the importance of psychological input in vaginal construction. However, such input should proactively question social norms about how women's genitalia should appear and function. Furthermore, rather than steering patients (back) to treatment, the entire MDT could more explicitly question social norms and help the women to do the same. By shifting the definition of success from anatomy to personal agency, the clinical focus is transformed from treatment to women.
In recent years, many counseling psychology training programs in the United States have adopted social justice principles into training. Although previous studies have provided thought-provoking ...discussions on social justice advocacy, they mostly reflected the voices of psychologists in academia; therefore, the advocacy work of practitioners has been neglected. In order to explore the advocacy experiences of counseling psychologists in practice, we utilized qualitative content analysis to analyze semistructured interviews with 11 practitioners who were trained in social justice-oriented counseling psychology doctoral programs. The findings were clustered under three domains: (a) participants’ development of a social justice orientation, (b) different ways of implementing advocacy in practice, and (c) positioning advocacy in psychology. The interviews depicted resources and challenges with regard to integrating advocacy into practice indicating that counseling psychologists continue to struggle with systemic barriers that limit their advocacy actions. We discuss implications for research, practice, and training in counseling psychology.
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