Jag får inte delta i mitt eget liv. – en kvalitativ studie om hur personer med psykiska funktionshinder beskriver mötet med socialarbetare

Abstract

The general objective of this qualitative study is to analyse and describe what people with psychiatric disabilities write on their blogs about their encounters with social workers. The questions the study is aiming to answer are: How do people with psychiatric disabilities describe their encounters with social workers? Do the informants describe instances of paternalism and advocacy? How do the informants describe their sense of meaningfulness, comprehensibility and manageability?

The study is based on a theoretical framework in which empowerment and sense of coherence (SOC) are the key elements, along with the concepts of paternalism and advocacy as well as meaningfulness, comprehensibility and manageability. The research data was collected from blogs on to the blog forum Psykiatrin.blogg.se – psykiatrins Robin Hood (meaning “the Robin Hood of psychiatry”). The method used is qualitative content analysis.

We found that the informants generally have a low sense of coherence in their encounters with social workers, and there is little evidence of empowerment. While examples of advocacy are rare, paternalism is an ever present component in the social workers’ actions and language use. Our informants describe a sense of being at the bottom of the hierarchy. Their views and ideas seem to be of little importance, and they are constantly presented with restrictions. Information is often withheld, and the informants often struggle to see the point and purpose of the meetings.

The general theme of our data is the writers describing a sense of exclusion – they do not get to actively participate in neither their treatment nor their own lives.