Brukerperspektiv i norsk forskning om innlagte psykiatriske pasienter. En litteraturgjennomgang

Abstract

The current Norwegian national plan for mental health and other public documents emphasizes the need to include patient experiences and patient participation in treatment and organising psychiatric care. However, it is not clear whether this should apply to psychiatric research involving psychiatric inpatients, and Norwegian research that rely on the experiences of psychiatric inpatients seems scattered. There is a need to summarize this field, and the aim of the present analysis was to review Norwegian research based on psychiatric inpatients' experiences since 1970. A main finding is that during the 1970s the field was dominated by social scientists with fewer such studies in the 1980s while nursing scientists dominated the field since 2000. The relative absence of psychiatric inpatient's voices in psychiatric research may reflect a bio-medical approach to mental illnesses. A critical or relativist paradigm will on the other side nurture such research. Important aspects of the lives of psychiatric inpatients concern being locked up, experiencing organizational changes, and stigmatization as a psychiatric patient. Knowledge of these aspects may be gained only by asking patients themselves.