Identity and causal explanations in mental health
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring how explanatory models are framed, interpreted, and shape client identities within secondary mental health care settings.
IRAS ID
179629
Contact name
Rhiannon Lane
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
UKCRN database , 19539
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Stigma is a particularly troublesome issue in mental health, making it important to understand the processes by which those with mental illness come to have 'spoiled identities' (Goffman, 1963). The mental health system has an important role in helping clients rebuild a positive identity. This PhD project will consider how causal and explanatory models regarding mental illness can particularly shape clients' identities. Previous findings on the relationship between explanatory models and stigma have exposed a complex and contradictory picture, whereby certain types of explanatory models appear to be associated with distinct forms of stigma - a relationship mediated by diagnosis. The tendency for causal explanations to produce distinct types of stigma has been termed the ‘brain or blame dilemma’ (Boyle, 2013). Since psychiatric professionals are prominent users of explanatory models, and diagnostic and therapeutic encounters are key sites of client identity reconstruction (White & Epston, 1990), professional-client interactions provide an ideal space to examine the role of these explanatory models in shaping patient identities. This study will focus on a diagnosis which has been relatively neglected within stigma research: bipolar disorder. The study will also seek to explore the complex ways in which causal explanations are framed and communicated in everyday interaction, and how these explanations might function to neutralise or increase stigma for mental health clients, e.g. through allocating/deflecting responsibility, by relating the cause to the person's personality etc.
References
Boyle, M. (2013). The persistence of medicalisation: Is the presentation of alternatives part of the problem? In S. Coles, S Keenan, & B. Diamond (Eds.), Madness contested: Power and Practice. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York, Simon & Schuster Inc.
White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. WW Norton & Company.
REC name
Wales REC 1
REC reference
15/WA/0343
Date of REC Opinion
8 Oct 2015
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion