The clinical gaze – ascribed gender(ed) identities in a mental health service context

Abstract

This article focuses on gender(ed) ascribed identities of service users in a mental health service context in Sweden. The empirical data were collected through observations of weekly team conferences. The examples can be described as 'frozen images' or ideal types in the sense that they illustrate the different ways service providers describe the service users' problems at a certain time in a certain context. This article illustrates that the 'the gaze' of the service providers was value-laden, making moral judgements tied to the notion of responsibility. However, the same kind of behaviour or diagnoses can be accounted for in different ways and hence lead to different outcomes for the service user, which illustrates 'severe mental illness' as a stretchable phenomenon. The team discussions also mirror the service users' strategies to handle professional and institutional power, that is, challenge the power position of professionals, with regard to the construction of service users as passive recipients or marked as 'the other'. The predominant accounts and constructions of identities as victimized can be seen as part of a feminization process, closely related to weakness and dependence.

Illuminating the gendered nature of health‐promoting activities among nursing staff in forensic psychiatric care

“…These studies are relevant to our results, in which categorisations of masculinity and femininity implied a way of thinking about mental illness supported by historical and cultural beliefs about gender (Johannisson, ). Indeed, Boysen, Ebersole, Casner, and Coston (), Driscoll‐Watson () , Mizok and Flemming () and Olin () illustrate that norms and values related to mental illnesses should not be isolated from the construction of femininity and masculinity.…”

“…However, what is often ignored is how gender as a social and active process leads to consequences for patient health (Connell, ). If nursing staff focus on protecting society as an overarching goal, it may mean that they (re)produce notions of bodies that inform certain beliefs about women and men in a caring context such as FPC (Gleason et al, ; Olin, ). Second, the goal of protecting society could lead to health promotion activities being interpreted as synonymous with the medical treatment of mental illness (SBU, ).…”

Disciplined into good conduct: Gender constructions of users in a municipal psychiatric context in Sweden

“…It includes norms and values about gender and ideas regarding how users should behave and how they should act with respect to femininity and masculinity. Being discoursively formed, the language is not only an individual choice; it is connected to the current practice (Olin, 2017).…”

“…Studies that focus on the topic of language used in professional meetings and gender in psychiatric practice are limited but have been conducted by Eivergård et al (2020). Such studies in relation to people with psychiatric disabilities are even more limited but have been conducted by Olin (2017). Inspired by previous research, we sought to examine how gendered discursive norms and notions of masculinity and femininity are (re)produced in professional discussions about people cared for as users of municipal psychiatric care.…”

“…From such a perspective, claims of absolute truth are viewed as sceptical. In line with that, language is understood as discursively formed and an organising principle that maintains and constructs knowledge according to dominant practices, values and power relations, including those involving gender (Olin, 2017). In other words, language does something.…”