Objective. As the history of psychiatry has been written, users have told their stories and often presented pictures incompatible with the professional or official versions. We ask if such a gap still exists and what the ethical as well as epistemological implications may be.Study Design. The design is based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, with a qualitative content analysis of the narratives.Data Sources. The paper draws on user narratives written after the year 2000, describing positive and negative experiences with the mental health services.Extraction Methods. Among 972 users answering a questionnaire, 492 also answered the open questions and wrote one or two stories. We received 715 stories. 610 contained enough information to be included in this narrative analysis.Principal Findings. The stories are coherent, containing traditional narrative plots, but reports about miscommunication, rejection, lack of responsiveness, and humiliation are numerous.Conclusions. The picture drawn from this material has ethical as well as epistemological implications and motivates reflections upon theoretical and practical consequences when users’ experiences do not influence professional knowledge to a larger degree.

Background: Clients have mixed experiences with mental health services. Historically there have been quite different and also incompatible approaches to treatment in mental health care. Some antagonisms may have been overcome, but clients’ experiences still seem to mirror approaches that are in contrast to each other. Aim: To describe different treatment approaches as clients experience them, discuss essential factors in, and differences between the approaches and the degree to which they appear corresponding or antagonistic. Method: Qualitative content analysis of stories from approximately 492 users dealing with positive, negative, or both positive and negative experiences with the health service system. Results: Clients experience different treatment cultures side by side within the mental health care system. The cultures exist on a continuum where monologue and dialogic cultures represent endpoints. Conclusion: It is important to acknowledge the contrasts clients have experienced between different treatment cultures. Realizing the contrast between approaches, it emerges as important that clients are given a choice and can get the kind of treatment they prefer.

This article investigates how discursive tensions concerning language use and worldviews amongst Norwegian actors in Green Care services influence communication, collaboration and the dynamics of policy formation. The study combines qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis based on individual interviews and multi-stage focus group interviews. It focuses on a critical perspective in the analysis of interests and perspectives that dominate the field of Green Care. The study shows how Green Care is understood based on the actors' perceptions of the users' problem situation and their recovery process. The results also highlight the conditions for good communication and collaboration amongst the actors in the field. The overarching challenge for the actors involved is in creating cultural change where both the 'green' and 'care' are seen as legitimate qualities. Green Care must be continually explored and nuanced based on the healing potential inherent in both nature and basic human compassion. Adequate meeting places for the actors involved should be established in order to develop a mutual understanding of each other's interests, intentions and perspectives. In doing so Green Care can become a form of social and environmental entrepreneurship integrating the value of community, the autonomy of individual voices, natural and social connectedness, and the importance of supportive relationships on the path towards recovery.