Premium
Integration or marginalisation? Clinical psychology as a strategy for dealing with psychosocial issues in a South African neurosurgery ward
Author(s) -
Miller Tracey,
Swartz Leslie
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10492112
Subject(s) - psychosocial , referral , context (archaeology) , psychology , neurosurgery , power (physics) , psychiatry , medicine , psychotherapist , nursing , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , biology
Biomedicine has been criticised for its failure to take adequate account of psychosocial issues. One attempt to address this has been to employ clinical psychologists in general hospital wards. In order to examine this phenomenon, four cases referred to the first author while she was an intern clinical psychologist working in a Neurosurgery ward are reported and discussed. In addition, interviews were conducted with two clinical psychologists and the head of this Department of Neurosurgery. Issues that emerged from the data included evidence of referral of what could be more accurately termed social or structural problems rather than psychological problems; power imbalances between psychologists and neurosurgeons, and the elaboration of these factors within the particular context of South Africa. Taking account of psychosocial issues by employing clinical psychologists in medical settings may fail in that it may ironically facilitate the marginalisation of these issues, and allow social and political issues to be individualised and pathologised.