Antipsychotic medication is integral to the treatment of severe and enduring mental health problems (e.g. schizophrenia). Such medication is associated with significant adverse side effects that can affect treatment adherence. To date there have been few attempts to analyse qualitatively service users' experience of taking antipsychotic medication. This study, conducted in Exeter, South West England, investigates the subjective experience of side effects of antipsychotic medication to gain a greater understanding of service users' experiences and to gain insights into adherence issues. Data were analysed using a variant of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and a model of the experience of taking antipsychotic medication was constructed. The interview schedule was then refined and further interviews (including a focus group) were conducted among a diverse sample recruited from local day centres. Results indicated that people taking antipsychotic medication do not see side effects and symptoms as separate issues. Instead, they describe drugs as 'good' or 'terrible'-an indication of the total impact of their treatment. The model constructed reflects this, having the core concept of Well-being: that is, normality of function, feeling and appearance to the outside world. Major themes relating to this core category were managing treatment, evaluating treatment and understanding of the situation. Implications for medication adherence and clinical practice, including drug choice, are discussed, and the doctor-patient relationship is also considered.
This study considered whether participants' tendency to conform to a group norm could be in¯uenced by priming them with categories associated with either conformity or anarchy. Participants were primed with one of two categories:`accountant prime',`punk prime' (plus a baseline`no prime'). They then participated in a variant of the Asch (1951) conformity paradigm. Results indicated that`punk'-primed participants conformed signi®cantly less than did`accountant'-primed participants, with the mean for the`no-prime' condition lying in between the two.`Accountant'-primed participants conformed to the group norm more than did the`no-prime' participants. In addition, the performance of`punk'-primed participants was comparable to that of participants who performed the judgment task in isolation (`solo' condition). This indicates that conformity pressures did not affect estimates for`punk'-primed participants. Implications of these ®ndings are discussed. Copyright When pondering over the socially acceptable thing to do, Mr Pickwick was fervent in his belief that it was safest to`do what the mob do'. A century after Dickens' observations on group behavior, Solomon Asch (1951) demonstrated this conformity effect in his now-classical series of studies on perceptions of line length. Naive participants in his studies conformed to the obviously errant group norm in 37% of their responses. In the years that followed, researchers have established a number of reasons why conformity occurs (e.g. Asch, 1956;Bond & Smith, 1996;Crutch®eld, 1955;Deutsch & Gerard, 1955;Eagly & Carli, 1981; Gerard, Wilhelmy, & Connolly, 1989;Insko, Smith, Alicke, Wade, & Taylor, 1985). The present article contributes to this debate by considering whether the tendency to conform can be in¯uenced by priming participants with categories associated with either anarchic or conformist behavior. WHY WE OFTEN DO WHAT THE MOB DOAcquiescence with the prevailing group belief or behavior can be determined by a number of factors. Informational social in¯uence, or the desire to know what is right, is one such factor. This need for
The extent to which collaborative research can redress power imbalances is debated with reference to some of the relevant literature. Different ways in which research can be collaborative and power shared between researchers and participants are discussed. The bene®ts and challenges speci®c to collaboration in the area of mental health research are considered, illustrated with examples from research we conducted into the experience of taking antipsychotic medication.
We examined whether social group attitudes are subject to context eects. It was hypothesised that manipulating the context in which a group exemplar was rendered accessible would produce dierent eects when subjects were subsequently asked to evaluate the exemplar's group. In our study, all subjects ®rst expressed their opinion about the (popular) Queen Mother before indicating their attitude toward the British Royal Family. In the`non-redundant' condition, the two questions were structured such that the Queen Mother was expected to be included in individuals' representation of the Royal Family, leading to a high correlation between the two judgements and a favourable evaluation of the group. Conversely, in the`redundant' condition, the questions were structured such that the Queen Mother was expected to be excluded from individuals' representation of the Royal Family, leading to a lower correlation between the judgements and a less favourable evaluation of the group. The results supported the hypothesis, and are consistent with the Schwarz and Bless (1992a,b) inclusion/exclusion model of assimilation and contrast.
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