Open AccessTo tell the right story
Author(s) -
Erik Eriksson
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
comparative social work
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.131
H-Index - 2
ISSN - 0809-9936
DOI - 10.31265/jcsw.v8i2.103
Subject(s) - narrative , personal narrative , ethnography , character (mathematics) , psychology , service (business) , point (geometry) , sociology , aesthetics , literature , art , anthropology , geometry , mathematics , economy , economics
From the starting point of narrative ethnography, this article explores a specific kind of service user involvement in psychiatry: staff training activities in which patients and former patients are invited to “tell their stories”. A core feature of these stories is that they are based on the narrators’ self-perceived experience, and they all have a highly personal character. I call these stories service user narratives, and these are the topic of study in this article. The narratives’ disposition, content and functions are explored, as is the role played by the personal aspects of the stories. This article investigates two functions of the service user narrative: the narrative as a means (1) of creating alternative images of mental ill health, and (2) of enabling a critique of psychiatry.