Abstract
“Mental health professionals” are increasingly speaking out about their own experiences of using mental health services. However, research suggests that they face identity-related dilemmas because social conventions tend to assume two distinct identities: “professionals” as relatively socially powerful and “patients” as comparatively powerless. The aim of this study was, through discourse analysis, to explore how “mental health professionals” with “mental health service user” experience “construct” their identity. Discourse analysis views identity as fluid and continually renegotiated in social contexts. Ten participants were interviewed, and the interviews were transcribed and analyzed. Participants constructed their identity variously, including as separate “professional” and “patient” identities, switching between these in relation to different contexts, suggesting “unintegrated” identities. Participants also demonstrated personally valued “integrated” identities in relation to some professional contexts. Implications for clinical practice and future research are explored. Positive identity discourses that integrate experiences as a service user and a professional included “personhood” and insider “activist,” drawing in turn on discourses of “personal recovery,” “lived experience,” and “use of self.” These integrated identities can potentially be foregrounded to contribute to realizing the social value of service user and other lived experience in mental health workers, and highlighting positive and hopeful perspectives on mental distress.
Highlights
The findings of Leamy, Bird, Le Boutillier, and Slade (2011) about recovery in the context of severe mental health diagnoses are consistent with this concept of identity
Participants were from different professional disciplines, had all used outpatient and/or inpatient mental health services, for difficulties identified by them as including depression, suicidal ideation, paranoia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, anxiety, and bulimia
This study provides evidence for the dilemmas faced by professionals with service user experience, echoing existing literature from several countries, including the dilemma of disclosure (Schulze, 2007); the idea that professionals are or should be beyond distress (May, 2001; McCourt, 1999); negotiating the positive and negative impact of being a service user (Joyce et al, 2007); managing stigma, prejudice, and discrimination (Adame, 2011); and facing “them-andus” dichotomies (Adame, 2011, 2014; Schiff, 2004)
Summary
According to St. Claire and Clucas (2012) “individuals actively manage multiple identifications in ways that can have paradoxical implications for their health and wellbeing” Claire and Clucas (2012) “individuals actively manage multiple identifications in ways that can have paradoxical implications for their health and wellbeing” The findings of Leamy, Bird, Le Boutillier, and Slade (2011) about recovery in the context of severe mental health diagnoses are consistent with this concept of identity From their extensive review of relevant qualitative literature, Leamy et al (2011) reported that connection with other people and a valued identity were two of five key factors that people with diagnoses of severe mental health conditions talked about as constituting recovery. Identity referred to gaining or regaining a positive identity and offloading a stigmatized one of “mental patient.”
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