Exploring the Relationship between the Person and the Disorder among Individuals Hospitalized for Psychosis

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that people suffering from severe mental illness develop strategies to cope with their disorder. This study describes one specific strategy of coping with psychosis--through the use of narrative or a story. The report is based on bimonthly, semistructured research interviews conducted with 43 persons who were hospitalized for severe mental illness with psychotic features over a 1-year period. Qualitative analysis revealed five distinct categories, which seem to reflect different interactions between the participants' sense of self in relation to their illness. Narrative theory helped to identify subtleties in these interactions described by participants and conceptualize the categories. Conceptual and clinical implications of this process and future research opportunities are discussed.

Self and narrative in schizophrenia: time to author a new story

“…In other words, people can entertain more than one perspective on their experience at any given time, and some people describe their silent deliberations between opposing perspectives as a useful way of adapting to the realities of having the illness. 42 Narrative can be a powerful means of stimulating and bringing to life such dialogue. In the same fashion, awareness of the barriers to forming such narratives and the effort to remove them and provide enabling conditions for their development can be crucial to recovery itself.…”

Movement Towards Coherence in the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia: A Method for Assessing Narrative Transformation

“…Authors from multiple perspectives have noted, for instance, that persons with schizophrenia do not refer to themselves as agents within a larger interpersonal world Aaltonen, 1995, 1998;Kline et al, 1996;Lysaker, et al, in press;Sass, 1992) and conceptualize their illness in a vague or implausible manner (Amador et al, 1995;. The stories people with schizophrenia tell of their lives also often appear empty in the sense that they contain little mention of their own social worth or reference to intimate connections with others (Davidson et al, 1995;Roe, 2001;Wright et al, 2000).…”

Changes in narrative structure and content in schizophrenia in long term individual psychotherapy: a single case study

“…They may fail to deeply or abstractly consider their own thoughts and feelings, or in other word, to engage in metacognitive or metarepresentational processes (Frith, 1992). The stories people with schizophrenia tell of their lives also often appear 'empty' in the sense that they contain little mention of their own social worth or reference to intimate connections with others (Roe, 2001;Roe & Ben-Yaskai, 1999;Wright, Gronfein, & Owens, 2000).…”