This book examines innovative approaches to the use of qualitative methods in mental health research. It describes the development and use of methods of data collection and analysis designed. These methods address contemporary and interdisciplinary research questions, such as how to access the voices of vulnerable populations, understand the relationship between experience and discourse, and identify processes and patterns that characterize institutional practices. The book offers insight into projects that reflect various cultural contexts and geographical locations as well as involve diverse research teams, ranging in their methodology from individual case studies to community-based interventions.
Chapters address how research method selection needs to be tailored to specific contexts within which studies are carried out and how synthesizing diverse perspectives of different disciplines – such as psychology, sociology, linguistics, history, and art – make a research endeavor more fruitful. The book offers a clear framework in which to assess the research presented in the book as well as map future directions for qualitative methodology in mental health research.
Key areas of coverage include projects that describe research with:
• Individuals confronted with critical life events.
• Former psychiatric patients.
• Individual and couple psychotherapy clients.
• Clients in a forensic setting.
• Persons affected by psychosis.
• Dementia patients.
• People living with cancer.
• Health care professionals.
Qualitative Research Methods in Mental Health is a valuable resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as therapists and other professionals in clinical and counseling psychology, psychotherapy, social work, and family therapy as well as all interrelated psychology and medical disciplines.
Chapter 10, “Engraved in the Body: Ways of Reading Finnish People’s Memories of Mental Hospitals” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Maria Borcsa is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Applied Sciences in Nordhausen (UASN), Germany, licensed psychological psychotherapist (CBT), family therapist, trainer and supervisor and founding member of the Institute of Social Medicine, Rehabilitation Sciences and Healthcare Research at UASN. She has published research papers, books and book chapters in the domain of family therapy and systemic practice in German, French, Italian and Greek. She has been board member of the European Family Therapy Association (EFTA) (2007-2016) and President of EFTA from 2013 to 2016.
Carla Willig is Professor of Psychology at City, University of London, UK. She is also a Chartered Health Psychologist and a registered Counselling Psychologist in private practice. A major theme in her work to date has been a concern with research methodology. She has published empirical and theoretical papers and book chapters concerned with epistemological and methodological questions. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Health Psychology, a member of the editorial board of Qualitative Research in Psychology, and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Psychological Therapies.
