Agnes Ringer | Roskilde University (original) (raw)
Papers by Agnes Ringer
Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund
Brugerinddragelse er veletableret som ideal i psykiatrien og der er store forhåbninger til, at øg... more Brugerinddragelse er veletableret som ideal i psykiatrien og der er store forhåbninger til, at øget brugerinddragelse og inddragelse af brugeres hverdagsliv, vil føre til recovery. I denne artikel analyserer vi brugerinddragelse i praksis og viser hvordan en forestilling om ”gam- mel psykiatri” kontra ”ny psykiatri” former hvad brugerinddragelse bliver til i det konkrete møde mellem patienter og professionelle Artiklen bygger på et etnografisk feltstudie vi gen- nemførte i 2016 af initiativet Brugerstyrede Indlæggelser (BSI). Vi undersøger hvad BSI gør ved relationen mellem brugere og professionelle, hvor vi især spørger hvilke dilemmaer og paradokser der opstår i positioneringen af brugerne, når man i en hospitalspsykiatrisk kontekst iværksætter en model som giver adgang til at indlægge og udskrive sig selv? For- målet er at indfange de dynamikker som driver eller modgår en forandring mod ”ny psy- kiatri”. Analysen viser en række ambivalenser og dobbeltheder i brugernes positioneri...
Sygeplejersken, 2014
Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center,... more Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center, raised questions about the scientific quality of the medical understanding of mental distress. Since then, representatives of the psychiatric paradigm have replied to that critique. Method: An analysis of the discourse of the debate showed that the leading voices represent two overlapping positions as to: What is mental distress and who may define it? Findings: A professional expert voice, where mental illness is seen as an objective dimension that fundamentally reflects the patient’s existence and ill core. A political voice, which is a neoliberal variety of the first voice and which adds to the professional expert voice a rationalist approach. Discussion: Social studies show, in line with Gøtzsche’s work, that maintaining that psychiatric diagnoses are objective and independent parameters is misleading and has serious consequences. The above reveals a need for a new paradigm that includes social, cultural and economic perspectives in the understanding of mental illness.
Listening to Patients A study of illness discourses, patient identities, and user involvement in ... more Listening to Patients A study of illness discourses, patient identities, and user involvement in contemporary psychiatric practice. Ringer, Agnes Publication date: 2013 Document Version Early version, also known as pre-print Citation for published version (APA): Ringer, A. (2013). Listening to Patients: A study of illness discourses, patient identities, and user involvement in contemporary psychiatric practice. Roskilde Universitet.
Analysing Health Communication
In this chapter, we discuss a methodology for studying health communication, which we call discur... more In this chapter, we discuss a methodology for studying health communication, which we call discursive ethnography. Such an approach combines a discursive perspective on language as productive and co-constituent of reality with an ethnographic lens for the contextual, material and spatial dimensions of the world. The discursive perspective we draw on regards language not just as a neutral or ‘innocent’ medium of information sharing. Rather, language and communication are seen as practices, which imply, and are embedded in, specific relations of power (Foucault 1980). While the focus on language is important in understanding health communication, health settings consist of more than language and communication. Hospitals and clinics are physical spaces with institutional norms guarding patient and professional conduct (Holen 2011; Ringer 2013). They are material environments in which objects and bodies exist and interact; places filled with technical equipment, machines, pills, scales, charts, televisions, whiteboards and hospital beds. They are places in which people live and die, where bodies heal or turn out to be irreversibly broken, where despair and hope live. The material environment, objects and bodies play a part in what becomes possible to say and communicate and in how the spoken or written words are interpreted.
Journal of Interprofessional Care
This article examines how discourses on mental distress are negotiated in mental health practice ... more This article examines how discourses on mental distress are negotiated in mental health
practice and their implications for the subjective experiences of psychiatric patients.
Based on a Foucauldian analysis of ethnographic data from two mental health institutions
in Denmark—an outpatient clinic and an inpatient ward—this article identifies three
discourses in the institutions: the instability discourse, the discourse of “really ill,”
and the lack of insight discourse. This article indicates that patients were required
to develop a finely tuned and precise sense of the discourses and ways to appear in
front of professionals if they wished to have a say in their treatment. We suggest that
the extent to which an individual patient was positioned as "ill" seemed to rely more
on his or her ability to navigate the discourses and the psychiatric setting than on any
objective diagnostic criteria. Thus, we argue that illness discourses in mental health
practice are not just materialized as static biomedical understandings, but are complex
and diverse—and have implications for patients’ possibilities to understand themselves
and become understandable to professionals.
This paper reports on methodological experiences from an ethnographic study in psychiatric insti... more This paper reports on methodological experiences from an ethnographic study in
psychiatric institutions in Denmark. Drawing on a poststructural framework and newer
discussions within qualitative research that view methodological problems as sources of data,
the paper analyzes how the challenges encountered in the fieldwork were indicative of
discursive norms within the mental health services. It is argued that the multiple ways the
researcher was positioned by participants revealed that the categories “patient” and “staff”
were produced as polarized binaries with little leverage for negotiating positions in between. At
the same time, it is shown that the patients find ways to resist the objectifying practices of the
researcher as well as of the mental health services. The conclusions are discussed against recent
attempts within the mental health services to promote a more patient-centered approach and
involve patients in the treatment.
Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center,... more Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center, raised questions
about the scientific quality of the medical understanding of mental distress. Since then, representatives of the psychiatric
paradigm have replied to that critique.
Method: An analysis of the discourse of the debate showed that the leading voices represent two overlapping
positions as to: What is mental distress and who may define it?
Findings: A professional expert voice, where mental illness is seen as an objective dimension that fundamentally
reflects the patient’s existence and ill core. A political voice, which is a neoliberal variety of the first voice and which
adds to the professional expert voice a rationalist approach.
Discussion: Social studies show, in line with Gøtzsche’s work, that maintaining that psychiatric diagnoses are
objective and independent parameters is misleading and has serious consequences.
The above reveals a need for a new paradigm that includes social, cultural and economic perspectives in the understanding
of mental illness.
Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund
Brugerinddragelse er veletableret som ideal i psykiatrien og der er store forhåbninger til, at øg... more Brugerinddragelse er veletableret som ideal i psykiatrien og der er store forhåbninger til, at øget brugerinddragelse og inddragelse af brugeres hverdagsliv, vil føre til recovery. I denne artikel analyserer vi brugerinddragelse i praksis og viser hvordan en forestilling om ”gam- mel psykiatri” kontra ”ny psykiatri” former hvad brugerinddragelse bliver til i det konkrete møde mellem patienter og professionelle Artiklen bygger på et etnografisk feltstudie vi gen- nemførte i 2016 af initiativet Brugerstyrede Indlæggelser (BSI). Vi undersøger hvad BSI gør ved relationen mellem brugere og professionelle, hvor vi især spørger hvilke dilemmaer og paradokser der opstår i positioneringen af brugerne, når man i en hospitalspsykiatrisk kontekst iværksætter en model som giver adgang til at indlægge og udskrive sig selv? For- målet er at indfange de dynamikker som driver eller modgår en forandring mod ”ny psy- kiatri”. Analysen viser en række ambivalenser og dobbeltheder i brugernes positioneri...
Sygeplejersken, 2014
Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center,... more Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center, raised questions about the scientific quality of the medical understanding of mental distress. Since then, representatives of the psychiatric paradigm have replied to that critique. Method: An analysis of the discourse of the debate showed that the leading voices represent two overlapping positions as to: What is mental distress and who may define it? Findings: A professional expert voice, where mental illness is seen as an objective dimension that fundamentally reflects the patient’s existence and ill core. A political voice, which is a neoliberal variety of the first voice and which adds to the professional expert voice a rationalist approach. Discussion: Social studies show, in line with Gøtzsche’s work, that maintaining that psychiatric diagnoses are objective and independent parameters is misleading and has serious consequences. The above reveals a need for a new paradigm that includes social, cultural and economic perspectives in the understanding of mental illness.
Listening to Patients A study of illness discourses, patient identities, and user involvement in ... more Listening to Patients A study of illness discourses, patient identities, and user involvement in contemporary psychiatric practice. Ringer, Agnes Publication date: 2013 Document Version Early version, also known as pre-print Citation for published version (APA): Ringer, A. (2013). Listening to Patients: A study of illness discourses, patient identities, and user involvement in contemporary psychiatric practice. Roskilde Universitet.
Analysing Health Communication
In this chapter, we discuss a methodology for studying health communication, which we call discur... more In this chapter, we discuss a methodology for studying health communication, which we call discursive ethnography. Such an approach combines a discursive perspective on language as productive and co-constituent of reality with an ethnographic lens for the contextual, material and spatial dimensions of the world. The discursive perspective we draw on regards language not just as a neutral or ‘innocent’ medium of information sharing. Rather, language and communication are seen as practices, which imply, and are embedded in, specific relations of power (Foucault 1980). While the focus on language is important in understanding health communication, health settings consist of more than language and communication. Hospitals and clinics are physical spaces with institutional norms guarding patient and professional conduct (Holen 2011; Ringer 2013). They are material environments in which objects and bodies exist and interact; places filled with technical equipment, machines, pills, scales, charts, televisions, whiteboards and hospital beds. They are places in which people live and die, where bodies heal or turn out to be irreversibly broken, where despair and hope live. The material environment, objects and bodies play a part in what becomes possible to say and communicate and in how the spoken or written words are interpreted.
Journal of Interprofessional Care
This article examines how discourses on mental distress are negotiated in mental health practice ... more This article examines how discourses on mental distress are negotiated in mental health
practice and their implications for the subjective experiences of psychiatric patients.
Based on a Foucauldian analysis of ethnographic data from two mental health institutions
in Denmark—an outpatient clinic and an inpatient ward—this article identifies three
discourses in the institutions: the instability discourse, the discourse of “really ill,”
and the lack of insight discourse. This article indicates that patients were required
to develop a finely tuned and precise sense of the discourses and ways to appear in
front of professionals if they wished to have a say in their treatment. We suggest that
the extent to which an individual patient was positioned as "ill" seemed to rely more
on his or her ability to navigate the discourses and the psychiatric setting than on any
objective diagnostic criteria. Thus, we argue that illness discourses in mental health
practice are not just materialized as static biomedical understandings, but are complex
and diverse—and have implications for patients’ possibilities to understand themselves
and become understandable to professionals.
This paper reports on methodological experiences from an ethnographic study in psychiatric insti... more This paper reports on methodological experiences from an ethnographic study in
psychiatric institutions in Denmark. Drawing on a poststructural framework and newer
discussions within qualitative research that view methodological problems as sources of data,
the paper analyzes how the challenges encountered in the fieldwork were indicative of
discursive norms within the mental health services. It is argued that the multiple ways the
researcher was positioned by participants revealed that the categories “patient” and “staff”
were produced as polarized binaries with little leverage for negotiating positions in between. At
the same time, it is shown that the patients find ways to resist the objectifying practices of the
researcher as well as of the mental health services. The conclusions are discussed against recent
attempts within the mental health services to promote a more patient-centered approach and
involve patients in the treatment.
Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center,... more Introduction: In January 2014, professor Peter Gøtzsche, head of the independent Cochrane Center, raised questions
about the scientific quality of the medical understanding of mental distress. Since then, representatives of the psychiatric
paradigm have replied to that critique.
Method: An analysis of the discourse of the debate showed that the leading voices represent two overlapping
positions as to: What is mental distress and who may define it?
Findings: A professional expert voice, where mental illness is seen as an objective dimension that fundamentally
reflects the patient’s existence and ill core. A political voice, which is a neoliberal variety of the first voice and which
adds to the professional expert voice a rationalist approach.
Discussion: Social studies show, in line with Gøtzsche’s work, that maintaining that psychiatric diagnoses are
objective and independent parameters is misleading and has serious consequences.
The above reveals a need for a new paradigm that includes social, cultural and economic perspectives in the understanding
of mental illness.