I have schizophrenia, but schizo-land doesn't have me: research from Norway on everyday life and recovery, with a focus on the meaning of work
Kristjana Kristiansen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Co-author(s): Marit Borg
Abstract
This presentation describes and discusses some tentative results from our studies exploring the process of 'recovery' for people with long-term mental distress in Norway. While Norway is internationally known regarding societal revolutions for people with for example intellectual disabilities, our mental health reform continues to parallel other international efforts which lag behind other disability reforms and are dominated by a bio-medical understanding of the 'problem', and perhaps increasingly so. Our empirical data come from working for several years in close collaboration with people with lived experience of long-term mental health problems, and we have worked together attempting to mutually discover what is helpful in a struggle for survival. Most of our collaborative researchers have been labelled schizophrenic, typically with long periods of hospitalisation and medication. This presentation includes our central findings about what seems to be helpful in 'getting on with life' (recovery), with a selected emphasis on the meaning of work. Quite fundamentally, we argue that an everyday life perspective (which in Norway is considered to be a cornerstone of social democratic values) may have helpful and perhaps crucial implications in exploring future directions for this at-risk 'group' of fellow citizens.