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April 2015 - present
August 2011 - present
Publications
Publications (63)
Studies exploring the experiences of recovering from mental health difficulties show the significance of social and relational aspects. Dialogical practices operate within the realm of social relations; individual perspectives are not the primary focus of attention. The present study is part of a series of qualitative studies from southern Norway,...
Purpose: The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which “small things” may be of importance for people with mental health difficulties.
Method: Empirical material from three different studies was reanalysed through a phenomenological, dialogical, approach.
Results: We discovered some paradoxical aspects of small things: i.e., they could be a...
Ei jente fortalte om en vond hendelse i skolegården: En gutt som hadde terget henne kom mot henne, hjertet begynte å hamre. «Hvor skal jeg gjøre av meg?» Så husker hun ingenting. Med denne hendelsen som utgangspunkt utforsker essayet hvordan fenomener vi omtaler som psykiske vansker kan sees som både kroppslige, sosiale, politiske og eksistensielle...
The deinstitutionalization of mental health institutions has enabled service users to live in the community and search for what Duff coins ‘enabling places.’ These places were explored through walking interviews, in which service-users led the way. This analysis revealed features which made places promote liveable lives: places help people explore,...
This article introduces the project Return to Reality: What Does the World Ask of Us? This project evolved from a concern that frameworks in mental health operate with knowledge as their primary mode in such a way that reality is lost from sight. This is not primarily an epistemological problem, but an ethical and existential one: ethical because a...
This interview article explores how British anthropologist Tim Ingold’s work can inspire innovation in mental health and the psy disciplines. Ingold critiques dominant biomedical and individualistic approaches, arguing for the importance of caring attentiveness and abolishing dichotomies like those between surface and depth, when engaging with peop...
The article presents the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF), which was developed by a working group under the British Psychological Association in 2018 as an alternative to traditional diagnostic systems such as DSM and ICD. PTMF criticises conventional diagnostics for being overly simplistic and based on an implicit assumption of individual vul...
We are living in turbulent times. In the aftermath of Covid-19, countries and communities continue to face multiple and interwoven crises. Geopolitical instability. War on the European continent. Cost of living crisis. Political polarization. The failures of capitalism in promoting and protecting the health of people and the planet. Globalized comp...
We are excited to introduce the first issue of the Nordic Journal of Wellbeing and Sustainable Welfare Development (NJWEL). We, the editorial board, represent different institutions, disciplines and strands of research. However, what unites us is a dedication to a common aim to support progress towards universal wellbeing and social sustainability....
This qualitative case study aimed to explore environmental circumstances and interactional processes that appeared to be relevant for the dynamics of resilience in adolescents exposed to child abuse. Fieldwork at a learning and coping centre for children and their families was combined with semi‐structured interviews with adolescent participants ag...
From being a concept questioning the core of psychiatric knowledge and practice, recovery has been adopted as a guiding vison for mental health policy and practice by different local, national, and international organizations. The aim of this article is to contextualize the different understandings of recovery and its psychiatrization through the e...
This paper points out some problematic aspects of qualitative research based on interviews and uses examples from mental health. The narrative approach is explored while inquiring if the reality of life here is forced into the formula of a chronological story. The hermeneutic approach, in general, is also examined, and we ask if the reality of life...
Studies show that there are strong links between parental conflict and children’s psychosocial problems. The program ‘No Kids in the Middle’ is a group-based, time-limited, multi-family intervention for children aged between four and 16, living with parents in prolonged conflict after divorce. The program is based on a dialogical framework and the...
In this article, I explore the idea that there is a fundamental ethical aspect that precedes social constructionism. I suggest that within social constructionism we can identify a development from seeing knowledge as socially constructed ( epistemological social constructionism) to seeing not only knowledge, but also corporeal ways of being as soci...
Our daily lives and sense of self are partly formed by material surroundings that are often taken for granted. This materiality is also important for people with mental health problems living in supported housing with surroundings consisting of different healthcare services, neighbourhoods, buildings or furniture. In this study, we explored how und...
Introduction
In the aftermath of the deinstitutionalisation in western countries, new community‐based mental health services have been established. An essential object of studies in this new institutional landscape has been helpful professional relationships, but we still lack knowledge about helpful relationships in community‐based institutional s...
Purpose
The aim of this study is to explore how material things might become involved in the recovery process of people with mental health difficulties.
Method
Empirical material from three different studies on various aspects concerning mental health issues that each of the authors had conducted was reanalysed through a phenomenological item anal...
This article explores how professional relationships may be helpful from the perspective of residents in staffed supportive housing for individuals with severe mental health and/or drug problems. Using in-dept interviews, residents were individually asked to describe a helpful relationship with a self-chosen staff member, the content of the help pr...
Places where people live are important for their personal and social lives. This is also the case for people with mental health problems living in supported housing. To summarise the existing knowledge, we conducted a systematic review of 13 studies with different methodologies regarding the built environment in supported housing and examined their...
Over the last few decades, various housing types for people with mental health problems have been developed for use in the community. These housing types differ in their objectives, staff support and design. In this study, we focus on how fire safety influences the lives of tenants in supported housing. The qualitative study was designed with a mul...
The aim of this study is to present concrete descriptions of the content in the construction of helpful relationships with staff, according to users. Starting with the re-occurring concept of the meaning of “little things” in recovery studies, a literature review was done. A thematic analysis shows that small things play an important role in improv...
The current epistemological scaffolding of psychotherapy and mental health care ruthlessly privileges what is already understood and given shape, to the extent that what is currently meaningless and chaotic is strained out. The present work is an experimental attempt at contesting this way of going about the business of mental (health) care. To ach...
As part of a larger research project, this qualitative study explores sequences from six network therapy sessions. We focused on these sequences because only the therapists found them to be meaningful; the other participants did not think they were significant. The aim of this study was to explore the therapists’ inner dialogues, the degree to whic...
In this article, we challenge the concept of the therapeutic relationship as an operationalisable entity. In contrast to this idea, we introduce Alphonso Lingis’ concept of community, and his distinction between the rational community and the community of those who have nothing in common. This is done through speculative analysis of a transcribed s...
As a part of a larger research project, this qualitative study explores the interplay between an outer dialogue and participants’ inner dialogues in network therapy with adolescents in the mental healthcare system for children and adolescents. The aim of this study is to explore how the participants’ inner dialogues contribute to significant and me...
Studies exploring the experiences of recovering from mental health difficulties show the significance of social and relational aspects. Dialogical practices operate within the realm of social relations; individual perspectives are not the primary focus of attention. The present study is part of a series of qualitative studies from southern Norway,...
Studies exploring the experiences of recovering from mental health difficulties show the significance of social and relational aspects. Dialogical practices operate within the realm of social relations; individual perspectives are not the primary focus of attention. The present study is part of a series of qualitative studies from southern Norway,...
Within mental health research, the promise of exploring the lived experience of those affected is increasingly acknowledged. This research points to the significance of social aspects. The present study is part of a series of qualitative studies exploring network-oriented practices in southern Norway. The aim of this study was to explore the social...
The present study is part of a series of qualitative studies focusing on dialogic practice in southern Norway. In this article, we present a qualitative study of a network meeting focusing on the interplay between the participants' inner and outer dialogues. The network meeting is between an adolescent boy, his mother and two network therapists, th...
Mennesker som strever med livene sine bør selv være med å vurdere hva som er den beste hjelpen. Fleksibilitet er stikkordet, skriver medlemmer av forskernettverket for sosiokulturelle perspektiver på psykisk helse.
In this article, we use the intersubjective ethics of Bakhtin and Levinas and a case illustration to explore change in therapy as an ethical phenomenon. We follow Lakoff and Johnson in their emphasis on the way our conceptions of change seem permeated by metaphors. Bakhtin and Levinas both suggest through a language in which metaphors play a crucia...
This article presents a qualitative study of a mental health promotion initiative at the interface between culture, health and education. In this initiative the aim is to facilitate conversations about various life issues in mainstream classes in high school. The study shows that the conversations set off thoughts and feelings with the students whi...
Artikkelen presenterer Prosjekt hjelp i Grenselandet som er gjennomført ved Klinikk for psykisk helse ved Sørlandet sykehus HF. Prosjektet har prøvd ut et systematisk tilbud om nettverkssamtaler i forbindelse med henvisning av unge fra barn/ungetjenesten til voksentjenesten. Gjennom en dialogisk og nettverks-orientert arbeidsform har en forsøkt å b...
