Background. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has been adopted by national governments to advance the interests and wellbeing of people with psychosocial disabilities (PPSD). It is of... more abstractBackground. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has been adopted by national governments to advance the interests and wellbeing of people with psychosocial disabilities (PPSD). It is often assumed that the adoption of a ‘rights’ framework will advance the dignity and autonomy of PPSD. However, little is known about how families and communities understand ‘rights’. The present paper, based on research conducted in Santiago, Chile, takes a contextual approach to rights, asking: How do family carers of PPSD understand and use the idea of ‘rights’? How does the context of caregiving shape families’ understanding of rights? Methods. Four focus groups were conducted with a total of 25 family carers (predominantly mothers) of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other severe neuropsychiatric conditions. Thematic analysis was conducted. Results. Carers’ experience of caregiving was marked by isolation, stigmatization, a lack of support and mistreatment by public services. Their family networks did not provide sustained help and support, and the public services they had used were characterized by scarce resources and inadequate support. Carers did not refer to rights of dignity or autonomy. Given an unsupportive context, and worries about who would care for their child after the carer's death, their primary interest in ‘rights’ was a right to guaranteed, long-term care. While carers endorsed the idea of universal, state-supported rights, appeals to compassion and the exchange of favours were spoken of as the most effective strategies for gaining a minimum level of services and support. Conclusions. Carers’ understandings, framed against a background of unmet needs and shaped by a history of unsatisfactory interactions with services and institutions, do not resonate with the principles of the CRPD. We suggest an expanded, relational struggle for rights that acknowledges the role of families and the tensions surrounding the distribution of rights within the family.

Disability Studies, Human Rights, Social Representations, Mental health law, Family Caregivers/Carers, and 2 more

This article argues that community health psychology’s core strategy of ‘community mobilisation’ is in need of renewal and proposes a new way of conceptualising community health action. Taking the Occupy movement as a... more abstractThis article argues that community health psychology’s core strategy of ‘community mobilisation’ is in need of renewal and proposes a new way of conceptualising community health action. Taking the Occupy movement as an example, we critique modernist understandings of community mobilisation, which are based on instrumental action in the service of a predetermined goal. Aiming to re-invigorate the ‘process’ tradition of community health psychology, we explore possibilities of an open-ended, anti-hierarchical and inclusive mode of community action, which we label ‘trusting the process’. The gains to be made are unpredictable, but we suggest that the risk is worth taking.

Community Psychology, Health Psychology, Collective Action, Protest, and Occupy Movement

Publisher: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Publication Date: Sep 2, 2013

Publication Name: Journal of health psychology

Although “community” is the very essence of Community Psychology –its object of study, theorizing and intervention, and therefore the raison d’etre of the discipline– the definition of the concept itself is polysemous... more abstractAlthough “community” is the very essence of Community Psychology –its object of study, theorizing and intervention, and therefore the raison d’etre of the discipline– the definition of the concept itself is polysemous, complex, and sometimes confusing (Montero, 2007). Additionally, as communities have experienced changes throughout the history of humankind, the concept also has undergone a transformation in meaning as will be described below. The development and consolidation of different types of collectivities is a key aspect of human history. In fact, the most important cultural achievements of humanity are the products of human cooperation (Tomasello, 2009; Nowak & Highfield, 2011). Initially this cooperation meant sharing a common goal and taking the perspective of others to improve the results of a collective effort such as stag hunting. Human specificity rests on coordination, mutual trust and, on the basis of it, social institutions. The key feature behind this specificity is what he calls shared intentionality, which involves “the ability to create with others joint intentions and joint commitments in cooperative endeavors” (Tomasello, 2009, pp. xiii–xiv). This process formed the basis for the development of increasingly complex frameworks of reciprocity in the form of groups around a shared culture. But none of this would have happened without the intrinsic and permanent human tendency to form communities in search of security, resources, and meaning. This tendency toward community has, nonetheless, undergone many transformations across places and over time. From the concrete collaborative task of hunting and gathering to the development of global virtual communities with no spatial referent, the changing and at the same time plural nature of communities seems to be a widely acknowledged fact. What is unclear, however, is what kind of concepts will be adequate to capture this complexity and to grasp these transformations analytically, in order to propose a useful and lasting concept of community both for theory as well as for research and intervention. This chapter has three main sections: 1) the origins of the concept, including some risks of its distortion, and a proposal for a set of core dimensions for a general concept of community; 2) current changes in communities, in relation to three topics: the impact of communication technologies upon the notion of “space”, the permanence of communities in time, and the issue of simultaneous community membership ending with a discussion about what these changes might imply for individual wellbeing and for society; and 3) the usefulness of the core dimensions for guiding and understanding practice by discussing two cases. We conclude by recalling the historical relevance of the “community” phenomenon, discussing the usefulness of a multifaceted concept that includes different core dimensions, and providing a definition of the concept of community.

Community Psychology, Community Development, and Community participation and engagement

Mental Health, Social Activism, Social Systems Theory, Mental Health Policy and Systems, and Health Social Movements

Human Rights, Social Representations, and Family Caregivers/Carers

Psychiatry, Medical Anthropology, Bioethics, Mental Health, Community-Based Mental Health Services, and 4 more

Sociology and Mental Health

Capitalismo, Adicciones, and Modelo Reducción de Daños

Discapacidad

Medicalization

Desde una mirada hermenéutica y fenomenológica, y utilizando como eje conceptual la Teoría de las Representaciones Sociales, este estudio pretende ser un aporte teórico y metodológico a la investigación cualitativa so... more abstractDesde una mirada hermenéutica y fenomenológica, y utilizando como eje conceptual la Teoría de las Representaciones Sociales, este estudio pretende ser un aporte teórico y metodológico a la investigación cualitativa sobre aquellos elementos simbólicos y culturales vinculados a la construcción social de la vejez.

Discourse Analysis, Social Representations, Ageism, Chile, Análisis del Discurso, and 3 more

Publication Date: 2008