Unpacking ‘the City’: An experience-based approach to the role of urban living in psychosis

Abstract

Primarily on the basis of epidemiological studies, recent research in psychiatry has established a robust link between urban living and psychosis. This paper argues first, that an experienced-based approach, moving beyond epidemiology, is needed in order to enable more fine-grained understandings of the city/psychosis nexus. The second part of the paper presents preliminary fieldwork results based on video-elicitation sessions with first-episode patients with psychotic disorders. These results lead to the generation of a series of hypotheses for further research on the role of density, sensory overload and social interaction as factors in the onset of non-affective psychoses. The conclusion discusses the insights gained from viewing the city as an experiential milieu rather than as a set of substances. We argue that such insights enable, on the one hand, observation of the role of specific places and situations - and thus to unpack 'the city'; and, on the other, to envisage the urban milieu as a nexus of possible sites of recovery.

How environments get to the skin: biosensory ethnography as a method for investigating the relation between psychosis and the city

“…What we are usually presented with, instead, is a list of heterogeneous 'factors'. (Fitzgerald et al 2016, p. 152) Such approaches fail to provide an ecological (temporal and spatial) analysis of the actual encounter of the participants with the urban; it does not provide the means to capture the situated experience of persons living with mental health problems or the precise ecology of mental illness (Söderström et al 2016).…”

“…Recent work stemming from different social sciences has been interested in similar questions. Such research has highlighted how persons living with mental health problems create and use urban 'niches' to help them handle their difficulties (Bister et al 2016); how such niches or 'bubbles' are constituted and may burst (McGrath et al 2019); how different elements in cities may come together and constitute 'enabling places' and 'atmospheres of recovery' (Duff 2012(Duff , 2016; how-using video elicitation and video analysis to analyse it-stress in cities is experienced and handled (Söderström et al 2016(Söderström et al , 2017; and how, through ethnography and mobile app devices, the links between migration and mental health in Shanghai can be understood (Manning et al 2018). This body of partly interdisciplinary work moves towards the forms of collaboration between the life sciences and the social sciences suggested by proponents of re-vitalized social sciences.…”

“…In previous work (Söderström et al 2016(Söderström et al , 2017, we have used video-recorded go-alongs and video elicitation with service users as means to produce narratives about their everyday experiences of the city. These methods have led us to respecify, situate, and attend to the complexities of, the 'factors of stress' described in medical research, such as density, deprivation or criminality.…”

“…First, while the importance of the sensory and its potential source of discomfort in the experience of urban space by people diagnosed with psychosis has been highlighted previously (Söderström et al 2016), these studies mostly focus on one particular form of sensory perception-e.g. sight or hearing or touch, etc.…”

Du retrait à la reconquête : pratiquer la ville après un épisode psychotique

“…Dans cette perspective, l'article vise à mettre en évidence les pratiques de retrait et de reconquête urbaine de jeunes personnes souffrant de troubles psychotiques et plus précisément de schizophrénie 2 , au cours de leur rétablissement. Les pratiques désignent les différentes formes de mobilisation de l'environnement, conscientes et inconscientes, qui sont développées de façon récurrente par les jeunes gens vivant avec un diagnostic de schizophrénie dans leur expérience de la ville (Söderström et al, 2017). Le rétablissement fait quant à lui référence au lent processus d'autonomisation des personnes souffrant de schizophrénie.…”