The Knowledge Concealed in Users’ Narratives, Valuing Clients’ Experiences as Coherent Knowledge in Their Own Right

Objective . As the history of psychiatry has been written, users have told their stories and often presented pictures incompatible with the professional or official versions. We ask if such a gap still exists and what the ethical as well as epistemological implications may be. Study Design . The design is based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, with a qualitative content analysis of the narratives. Data Sources . The paper draws on user narratives written after the year 2000, describing positive and negative experiences with the mental health services. Extraction Methods . Among 972 users answering a questionnaire, 492 also answered the open questions and wrote one or two stories. We received 715 stories. 610 contained enough information to be included in this narrative analysis. Principal Findings . The stories are coherent, containing traditional narrative plots, but reports about miscommunication, rejection, lack of responsiveness, and humiliation are numerous. Conclusions . The picture drawn from this material has ethical as well as epistemological implications and motivates reflections upon theoretical and practical consequences when users’ experiences do not influence professional knowledge to a larger degree.