scholarly journals ‘He’s my mate you see’: a critical discourse analysis of the therapeutic role of companion animals in the social networks of people with a diagnosis of severe mental illness

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-334
Author(s):  
Helen Brooks ◽  
Kelly Rushton ◽  
Karina Lovell ◽  
Rebecca McNaughton ◽  
Anne Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Severe Mental Illness ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Therapeutic Agents ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Personal Network

There is increasing recognition of the role pets play in the management of mental health conditions. Evidence suggests that pets promote social interaction and provide secure and intimate relationships which support the management of symptoms. This paper aimed to extend this evidence by exploring the phenomenological understanding of relationships and relationality with companion animals as therapeutic agents in the context of people’s wider social networks.A qualitative study was undertaken incorporating 35 interviews with 12 participants with a diagnosis of severe mental illness who identified a pet as being important in the management of mental health. Participants took part in three in-depth interviews centred on ego network mapping over a 12-month period (baseline, 6 and 12 months). A critical discourse analysis examined therapeutic relationships with pets in relation to mental health and compared these to other types of support over time. Summative discourse analyses were combined with a cross-case thematic analysis to look for commonalities and differences across individuals.Compared with interactions with other therapeutic agents, relationships with pets were free from the obligations and complexities associated with other types of network members and provided an extension and reinforcement to an individual’s sense of self which militated against the negative experiences associated with mental illness. Relationships with human network members were more variable in terms of consistency and capacity to manage demands (eg, network members requiring support themselves) and the emotions of others associated with fluctuations in mental health.This study adds weight to research supporting the inclusion of companion animals in the lexicon of mental health self-management through the therapeutic value attributed to them by participants within a wide personal network of support. The findings point to how consideration might usefully be given to how relationships with companion animals can be incorporated into healthcare planning and delivery.

scholarly journals The Roots Of Practice: An Anti-Colonial Critical Discourse Analysis Of Western Nature-Based Mental Health Therapies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Chui
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Therapeutic Modalities ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
Mental Health Practices ◽  
And Coping

<div>This study seeks to explore how nature-based therapies are understood in Western “mental health” practices. Specifically, horticultural and equine-assisted therapeutic models are examined for discursive themes tied to mind-body connections, attachment and healing. Additionally, texts used to teach specific therapeutic modalities are examined to further explore common concepts such as mindfulness and coping. In conducting a review of relevant literature, similar themes were revealed which contributed to a base knowledge for understanding the discourse around nature-based therapies. Engaging in an anti-colonial theoretical framework and a modified critical discourse analysis methodology, this qualitative study explores the research question: “What are the discourses which inform Western nature-based therapies?” Ultimately, this study aims to develop a more thorough understanding of how these therapies are linked to Indigenous approaches, how practices may be appropriated and used by Western practitioners, and the shift in social work towards more wholistic therapeutic practices. </div>

scholarly journals The Roots Of Practice: An Anti-Colonial Critical Discourse Analysis Of Western Nature-Based Mental Health Therapies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Chui
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Therapeutic Modalities ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
Mental Health Practices ◽  
And Coping

<div>This study seeks to explore how nature-based therapies are understood in Western “mental health” practices. Specifically, horticultural and equine-assisted therapeutic models are examined for discursive themes tied to mind-body connections, attachment and healing. Additionally, texts used to teach specific therapeutic modalities are examined to further explore common concepts such as mindfulness and coping. In conducting a review of relevant literature, similar themes were revealed which contributed to a base knowledge for understanding the discourse around nature-based therapies. Engaging in an anti-colonial theoretical framework and a modified critical discourse analysis methodology, this qualitative study explores the research question: “What are the discourses which inform Western nature-based therapies?” Ultimately, this study aims to develop a more thorough understanding of how these therapies are linked to Indigenous approaches, how practices may be appropriated and used by Western practitioners, and the shift in social work towards more wholistic therapeutic practices. </div>

scholarly journals Sexual violence and the mental health system: A critical discourse analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Getchell
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Health System ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Mental Health System ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Health Service Providers ◽  
Broad Term

Sexual violence is a relevant topic in the Canadian mental health system. However, the dominant bio-medical understanding of mental health can be harmful to survivors. This study is focused on analyzing how sexual violence is discussed within the bio-medical mental health system. The bio-medical understanding of mental health is one that conceptualizes “mental illness” is brain disease and emphasizes pharmacological treatment. Sexual violence is a broad term that describes any violence, physical or psychological, carried out through sexual means or by targeting sexuality. Critical Discourse Analysis is used in this study to find and analyze discourses in the bio-medical mental health system found in three interviews with mental health service providers. The discourses that emerged were as follows: 1. people were “boiled down” to their diagnoses or experiences of sexual violence; 2. professionalism; 3. being funneled into “streams of care”; 4. what makes someone credible; and 5. who “gets it”. The MRP concludes with a discussion of implications of these findings for social work.

scholarly journals Role of Social Support and Ego Network Characteristics on Quality of Life

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 637-654
Author(s):  
David C. Kondrat ◽  
W. Patrick Sullivan ◽  
Kelli E. Canada ◽  
Jeremiah W. Jaggers
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Severe Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Court ◽  
Mental Health Courts ◽  
Network Characteristics

Mental health courts offer alternatives to incarceration for persons with severe mental illness who are involved in the criminal justice system. These courts have the dual function of ensuring treatment for persons involved in the court as well as ensuring the safety of the public. Persons with severe mental illness who are involved in mental health courts rely on others for support, such as family members. Others may buttress the participant from engaging in criminal activities and provide for needs of the participant. The supportiveness as well as the composition of one’s network members may play a role in the success of mental health court participants, such as successfully completing the mental health court program and avoiding incarceration. Little research has explored how social support impacts mental health court participants. We explored how the composition and sense of support of network members were associated with mental health court participants’ quality of life. We regressed quality of life on social support and network characteristics of 80 participants in two mental health courts. Findings suggest that perceived support is positively associated with quality of life, and the proportion of family in one’s network was negatively related to quality of life. Findings suggest that persons involved in mental health courts need supportive others in their social networks in addition to family. More research is needed to explore the reasons having a higher proportion of family members in one’s network is associated with lower quality of life. Practitioners need to pay attention to and leverage mental health court participants’ social networks to help improve their quality of life.

scholarly journals Features of the discursive environment as a source for creating meaning in online communication (using the example of social networks)

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. A. Yushkina ◽  
M. A. Panarina
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Data File ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Deliberate Strategy

With the spread of online communication, more and more attempts are being made to study it as a process occurring in different discursive spaces. In the article, using the example of a single message hosted on several social networks, the discursive conditions and the possibilities of various social media to influence the content of the meanings, created within their environment, have been analyzed. The subject of the research was the discursive characteristics of representations of a single message in various social networks. The purpose of the paper is presentation of a theoretical and methodological approach for cross-platform analysis of social media discourse, which, if desired, can be expanded on a larger data file, taking into account the results of the qualitative critical discourse analysis of the case introduced. The method of critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been used, which allows you to identify and analyze social structures in the framework of dialectical relationships. In the course of the study and analysis, it was revealed, that even in the case, when using the variable capabilities of various social networks to create and transmit meanings is not a deliberate strategy of a single institution, its messages were filled with different semantic content, which means, that they have different convincing and legitimizing opportunities. This was due to the inability to avoid certain conditions of production, creation and distribution of content, set by the policy of social networks. Social network, as a communicative space, creates a mode of production, distribution and consumption of content, and in this mode, communication is already carried out. Due to the specific features of each network, one can say, that they create different discursive spaces.

scholarly journals ‘Such a white thing to do’: A discourse analysis of CAMH’s Coping with COVID-19 Campaign

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
McKaila Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Social Work Practitioners ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
The Ideal

This major research paper is a modified critical discourse analysis of lived experience testimonials from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)’s Coping with COVID-19 campaign. Social work practitioners and researchers must consider the inherent violence in the complex manifestations of sanism and racism (re)produced through discourse and their inextricable confluence with institutions, colonial legacies and realities which operate at this juncture in support of white supremacy. The identified discourses reproduce the ideal neoliberal subject and operate as technologies which maintain the colonial project and white supremacy. If we stake any claim to anti-racist praxis at this juncture, it is necessary to radically disclose our complicity within this colonial project, acknowledge our confluent realities and interrogate any claim to anti-racism. If we fail to interrogate these discourses constructing madness, we not only permit the violent trajectory of sanism but operationalize the deeply entrenched (re)production of violent white supremacy. key words: critical discourse analysis, sanism, racism, white supremacy, psychocentrism

scholarly journals Sexual violence and the mental health system: A critical discourse analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Getchell
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Health System ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Mental Health System ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Health Service Providers ◽  
Broad Term

Sexual violence is a relevant topic in the Canadian mental health system. However, the dominant bio-medical understanding of mental health can be harmful to survivors. This study is focused on analyzing how sexual violence is discussed within the bio-medical mental health system. The bio-medical understanding of mental health is one that conceptualizes “mental illness” is brain disease and emphasizes pharmacological treatment. Sexual violence is a broad term that describes any violence, physical or psychological, carried out through sexual means or by targeting sexuality. Critical Discourse Analysis is used in this study to find and analyze discourses in the bio-medical mental health system found in three interviews with mental health service providers. The discourses that emerged were as follows: 1. people were “boiled down” to their diagnoses or experiences of sexual violence; 2. professionalism; 3. being funneled into “streams of care”; 4. what makes someone credible; and 5. who “gets it”. The MRP concludes with a discussion of implications of these findings for social work.

scholarly journals Failed Refugee Claimants: Negotiating Rights, Security and Citizenship

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athanas Njeru
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Refugee Claimants ◽  
The Government

Individuals and groups engage discursively in relationships and negotiations as they try to structure and influence the social space where they live. This engagement further constructs the social space through the use of concepts, objects and subject positions. This study examines the representation and construction of failed refugee claimants by the Canadian newsprint media. Through the use of the moral panic as envisioned by Stephen Cohen and others, the study employs critical discourse analysis to reveal complex struggles in the Canadian refugee system through the discursive activity of the government, nonprofit agencies and social networks. The study concludes that a moral panic has occurred in the Canadian refugee system and has resulted in the enactment of a new Canadian refugee system through the passing of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act Bill C-11), Protecting Canada’s Immigration Act (Bill C-31) and the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act (Bill C-43).

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