‘You have to make a new way of life’: women's drug treatment programmes as therapeutic landscapes in Canada

Abstract

The concept of the ‘therapeutic landscape’ has been widely applied by health geographers over the past decade and a half. Despite its broad application, the concept has been criticized. Some scholars, for example, have argued that it adopts an overly positive view of the health effects of therapeutics settings. Others have noted a lack of attention to gender. In this article we respond to these limitations by engaging with feminist research on women and drug use to critically examine women's experiences of the therapeutic space of drug treatment programmes. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted at two sites in southern Ontario, we examine the ways in which programmes' organizational logics, daily routines and social spaces are shaped by gendered assumptions about the nature of, and solutions to, women's drug use. In so doing, we contribute to a more nuanced and critically informed understanding of such landscapes.

El concepto de “paisaje terapéutico” ha sido ampliamente aplicado por geógrafos y geógrafas de la salud a lo largo de la última década y media. A pesar de su amplia utilización, el concepto ha sido criticado. Algunos investigadores, por ejemplo, han argumentado que adopta una mirada demasiado positiva de los efectos que los ambientes terapéuticos tienen sobre la salud. Otros han hecho notar la falta de atención al género. En este artículo respondemos a estas limitaciones, ocupándonos de la investigación feminista sobre las mujeres y el uso de drogas para examinar en forma crítica las experiencias de las mujeres en el espacio terapéutico de los programas de tratamiento de adicción a las drogas. Basándonos en entrevistas en profundidad y observación participante llevadas a cabo en dos localidades en el sur de Ontario, estudiamos las formas en que la lógica organizacional de los programas, sus rutinas diarias y sus espacios sociales son influidos por supuestos generizados sobre la naturaleza del uso de drogas por parte de las mujeres y sus soluciones. De esta manera, hacemos una contribución hacia una comprensión más matizada y críticamente fundamentada de dichos paisajes.

Keywords:

• drug use
• gender
• treatment
• therapeutic landscapes
• women
• Canada

Keywords:

• uso de drogas
• género
• tratamiento
• paisajes terapéuticos
• mujeres
• Canadá

Acknowledgements

Our sincere gratitude to the women, both clients and staff members, who agreed to participate in this research. We would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their very constructive criticism of an earlier draft of the article. The research was supported by a standard research grant from the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

Notes

1. This use of therapeutic landscape is similar to the ‘programmatic space’ used by Fairbanks (2009) to capture both the recovery house programme inhabited by men in treatment and the welfare offices, doctors' clinics and other spaces that formed part of their daily geographies.