Dwelling with Multiplicity: Negotiating Borders in the Lifeworld of First Episode Psychosis
Sites a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies March 11, 2022 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.11157/sites-id490 via OpenAlex
Summary
In art workshops for people with first episode psychosis, participants experienced a fuller lifeworld compared to traditional clinical settings. The workshops countered how institutional narratives reinforce diagnostic boundaries. By engaging concepts of dwelling, borderlands, and lifeworld, the study details how witnessing the aesthetics of artwork created in the project allowed for a richer experience of psychosis, contrasting with its construction in clinical spaces.
Study at a glance
| Design | ethnographic study |
|---|---|
| Population | people with first episode psychosis |
| Key finding | Art workshops for first episode psychosis allowed for a fuller lifeworld experience, countering the diagnostic boundaries reinforced in clinical settings. |
Abstract
This paper explores intersections of cure, harm, diagnostic practices, and lifeworlds of mental disability within the field of first episode psychosis. Drawing on findings from a collaborative art workshop developed within an ethnographic study of first episode psychosis, we contrast the experience and phenomenology of psychosis within the art workshops with the construction of psychosis in traditional clinical spaces. Engaging concepts of dwelling, borderlands, and lifeworld within this context, we detail how the workshops countered the ways in which institutional and methodological structuring of narratives of psychosis reinforce diagnostic boundaries. In contrast to the clinical setting, a fuller lifeworld was experienced through witnessing the aesthetics of artwork that was created within the project.