Invoking and inscribing mental illness: A discursive analysis of diagnostic terminology in inpatient treatment planning meetings

Abstract

Critical feminist analyses document the power of psychiatric labeling, but less attention has been given to the social processes involved in giving and acquiring labels. Utilizing a discursive method based on conversation analysis, this study examined conversations among staff and with patients in treatment team meetings on an adult, involuntary inpatient unit of a state psychiatric hospital in the US, with a focus on how problem formulation and role negotiations are achieved and how diagnostic terminology figures into that work. In this brief report, extracts from treatment planning meetings with two female patients are presented to illustrate how diagnostic terminology steers conversations away from addressing the context of these women’s lives.