From Patient to Therapatient

Abstract

We explored the experiences of social work students with psychiatric difficulties and focused on their challenges as they went through the different stages of development as health care professionals. We interviewed 12 social work students with psychiatric difficulties and analyzed the data using the immersion/crystallization method. The findings reveal the developmental process they underwent from being patients to being "therapatients" (therapists who are also patients; here, therapists coping with psychiatric difficulties). This process included four stages: an initial exploration of the health care world; questioning the possibility of a patient being a therapist and feeling incompetent; identifying their ability to be professionals; and integrating between their patient and therapist parts to become a therapatient. Understanding this process and finding ways to help students through it is crucial to allowing the patient and therapist parts to "live" together and enrich each other, and to allowing integration of professional knowledge and personal experience.

Core experiences of parents of children with autism during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

“…The analysis included an iterative consensus-building process of reading and re-reading each interview separately and then discussing the themes that emerged, verifying that they faithfully reflected the content of the reported material and not our own impressions. This collaborative and iterative data analysis allowed examination of additional opinions and a reflective process that focused on differentiating between our personal experiences and perceptions as therapists and parents (Goldberg et al, 2015) and the actual information that emerged from the transcribed text (e.g. thinking that the lockdown would be experienced very badly by all parents; or identifying unique ways of coping developed by parents).…”

A Qualitative Study Examining Experiences and Dilemmas in Concealment and Disclosure of People Living With Serious Mental Illness

“…This approach was done under the guidance of David Roe and Orit Karnieli-Miller, their thesis supervisors. Such a process allowed them to reflect on and share their assumptions, experiences, and judgments, and to recognize their personal positions and the impact of their experience on the process (Creswell, 1998; Goldberg, Hadas-Lidor, & Karnieli-Miller, 2015; Husserl, 1970; Schwandt, 1997). As mentioned, to avoid personal bias, at least two authors analyzed about 20% of the data.…”

The mental health consumer movement and peer providers in Israel

“…Important issues for consumer providers and peer specialists include their unique competencies and disclosure (with whom, timeliness, appropriateness, etc.). Such questions impact the training of peers and lead to ongoing examination and development of its conceptualisation (Goldberg et al 2015; Legere & Farkas, 2016; Bendas-Jacob, 2017; NSMHRIR, 2017 course for consumers-as-providers Website (Hebrew)).…”

“…In these recent years, consumers (e.g., Tzin, 2011) and family members have regularly voiced their views and concerns through personal, professional and political platforms orally, in writing and through the electronic media (many examples appear in Lishma, n.d.; Malam, n.d.; Maman, n.d. and Ozma, n.d.). An increasing number of individuals with a lived experience of mental illness pursue higher education and research focusing on the study of personal experiences as consumers and professional providers (e.g., Goldberg et al 2015; Bril-Barniv et al 2016).…”