Shadow encounters - speaker at the American Anthropological Associastion annual meeting in Florida

Beskrivelse

Social recovery unfolds within a social and interpersonal context (Topor et al 2011, Slade et al 2014) yet studies of social interaction on psychiatric wards have to a great extend focused on relations between patients and staff. Different forms of group therapy as well as peer support have opened up the potentials of co-recovery among users, but these initiatives are often in fact initiated and structured by professionals and professionalized even though they are presented as user-initiated. This paper enhances anthropological studies of social recovery by focusing on the relationships between mental health users themselves. Research shows that mental health users have a great deal of time outside professionally initiated activities, which some define as "waiting time" or "dead time” (Ringer & Holen 2019) and that they inhabit what I together with my collegue Mari Holen frame as "shadow encounters" taking place in liminal spaces within the institutional setting. Such liminal spaces include but are not restricted to the smoking room and corridors at nighttime, i.e. spaces for encounters that arise outside the intentions and frameworks of professionals. These spaces exist in the margins of everyday life and are hence often overlooked or recognized as irrelevant to the treatment process (Steno 2023, Steno & Jøhnsson 2022). In this paper I zoom in on space, relations and subject in such liminal encounters to explore potentials and resources, as well as the potential harms, in the spontaneous and unintended encounters between mental health users.

Periode	23 nov. 2024
Begivenhedstitel	American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting : Praxis
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Arrangør	The American Anthropological Association
Placering	Tampa, Florida, USAVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International