The clinical gaze – ascribed gender(ed) identities in a mental health service context

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on gender(ed) ascribed identities of service users in a mental health service context in Sweden. The empirical data were collected through observations of weekly team conferences. The examples can be described as ‘frozen images’ or ideal types in the sense that they illustrate the different ways service providers describe the service users’ problems at a certain time in a certain context. This article illustrates that the ‘the gaze’ of the service providers was value-laden, making moral judgements tied to the notion of responsibility. However, the same kind of behaviour or diagnoses can be accounted for in different ways and hence lead to different outcomes for the service user, which illustrates ‘severe mental illness’ as a stretchable phenomenon. The team discussions also mirror the service users’ strategies to handle professional and institutional power, that is, challenge the power position of professionals, with regard to the construction of service users as passive recipients or marked as ‘the other’. The predominant accounts and constructions of identities as victimized can be seen as part of a feminization process, closely related to weakness and dependence.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental illness
• power positions
• qualitative study
• gender (ed) ascribed identities

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the informants for participating in this study, and professor Karin Barron, Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Elisabeth Olin, PhD, associate professor at the Department of Social Work, University of Gotheburg. Her research interest are social aspects of everyday life and living conditions for disabled people with focus on social relationships, social identities and power dimensions.