Skip Links |
Centre for Disability Studies Disabilty Studies Conferences Archive Lancaster University home page
2006 Conference Archive
Your are here: Home > Presenters & Abstracts> Roets

Living through exposure to toxic psychiatric orthodoxies: Exploring narratives of people with 'mental health problems' who are looking for employment in the open labour market

Griet Roets
Co-author(s): Kristjana Kristiansen, Geert Van Hove and Wouter Vanderplasschen

Powerpoint presentation

Abstract

For people with long-term 'mental health problems', it seems almost impossible to capture a status as adult, respected workers. In a recent research project, we explore lived experiences and insights of five people with long-term 'mental health problems' about their search for employment on the open labour market in a disabling society. Essential to our inductive and exploratory research design and analysis is the belief that the voice and lived experiences of those who use (or have used, and are perhaps dependent on) services provide us with seldom recognized though valuable sources of knowledge. As the result of our qualitative, inductive analysis we reveal five central findings: (1) losing the game before it starts; (2) internalising the vicious circle of victim-blaming; (3) from control overload to a life with inadequate supports; (4) from crushed dreams back to passive inactivity; and (5) signs of resilience and resistance. In meaningful dialogue, survivors give birth to alternative and plural epistemological grounds of life with 'madness'. We argue that psychiatric discourses, what we term toxic psychiatric orthodoxies, silence, disable, and construct survivors as unemployable. Certain identities and understandings of needs are supported by the practices of welfare provision, while others are understood as private or deviant.

«Back to Presenters

| Home 2006 | Programme| Presenters and Abstracts| Conferences Archive |