Combining Critical Ethnography and Critical Discourse Analysis in Mental Health Nursing Research.

BACKGROUND: It is uncommon to combine critical ethnography with critical discourse analysis (CDA) in health research, yet this combination has promise for managing challenges inherent in critical mental health nursing research. OBJECTIVES: This article describes a methodologically innovative way to address issues that arise in the context of critical mental health nursing research. METHODS: This article draws on two studies that each employed a combination of critical ethnography and CDA in the context of mental health nursing research, discussing the challenges and implications of this approach. RESULTS: Although the combination critical ethnography and CDA presents several challenges, it also provides a framework for researchers to sustain a critically reflective stance throughout the research process. This facilitates the process of reanalyzing and reflecting on how healthcare practices and knowledge both support and are constrained by hegemonic discourses. DISCUSSION: This combination has the potential to facilitate the production of new, emancipatory knowledge that will assist nurses in understanding issues of structural inequity within the healthcare system.

Exploring Clients' Experiences of Transitioning Mental Health Nursing Care from an In-Person to a Virtual Format due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led mental health professionals to change the way they engaged with clients, often replacing in-person consultations with virtual ones via telephone or videoconferencing. While studies have investigated the delivery of virtual physical health care, only a handful have investigated the delivery of virtual mental health. These specifically focussed on the outcomes of virtual care whether experiential, practical, or empirical. The transition from in-person to virtual care delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been unexplored. Accordingly, the purpose of the study was to: (1) Explore the experiences of clients who had to transition from an in-person to a virtual provision of mental health care due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and; (2) Explore the nurses' experiences of this technological transition. Using an interpretive phenomenology methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nurses and clients who have experienced the in-person to virtual transition of service delivery at a tertiary mental health hospital in Ontario, Canada. In this article, we focus on the results stemming from our interviews with clients. The themes generated from the analysis of client experiences are 1) the psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clients, (2) mixed feelings of clients towards nursing care delivered via technological means and (3) the role of nurses regarding transitioning of in-person care to technology-mediated care. These findings are relevant as mental health care hospitals are considering how they will deliver services once concerns with the transmission of the COVID-19 virus are resolved.

Discursive constructions of family functions in forensic psychiatry: A critical ethnographic perspective.

Significant barriers remain regarding the implementation of family-centred approaches in the domain of forensic psychiatry despite their effectiveness at increasing adherence to treatment, improving attendance to medical appointments, decreasing readmission rates and reducing episodes of relapse. We attribute these barriers to a fundamental gap in our understanding of the family function and its role within the forensic psychiatric system. Despite requesting to be included and considered as partners, some families feel excluded and sidelined, which causes distress, incomprehension and disengagement. We approached this tension at the discursive level through a critical ethnography of the Review Board and the work of Foucault on psychiatric power, which provided us with a unique opportunity to understand how the role of families are constructed and sustained in the Canadian forensic psychiatric system. To do so, we mobilized data stemming from ethnographic observations and documentary artifacts entitled 'reasons for disposition'. Data analysis allowed us to identify two discursive constructions of familial functions: (1) families as repositories of information and (2) families as supervisory agents. These results have implications for health care professionals and administrators in forensic psychiatry who are increasingly adhering to family-centred care models without questioning what such care or what such family engagement entails.

"The Person Gets Lost in the Whole Process": Access to Physical Healthcare for Patients Hospitalized in a Psychiatric Hospital.

Background and Purpose: Persons living with mental illnesses have unmet physical healthcare needs, leading to premature death. When they attempt to access physical health services, they are faced with numerous barriers that lead to delays in care. Although mental health nurses are identified as being essential actors in helping persons with mental illnesses navigate the complexities of the healthcare system, they also engage in conduct that further stigmatizes them. To complicate matters more, mental health nurses themselves face stigmatization when they help their patients living with mental illnesses access physical healthcare services. The aim of the study was to explore mental health nurses' experiences of associative stigma when accessing physical health services for their patients. Methods: To achieve this aim, we used an interpretive phenomenology methodology and a theoretical framework rooted in Erving Goffman's notion of associative stigma. Specifically, we conducted six interviews with mental health nurses working at an urban multisite psychiatric hospital to elicit accounts of their experiences of associative stigma when seeking physical healthcare for their patients and the meanings they make of these. Results: The results presented in this article illustrate some of the mechanisms by which stigmatization toward persons living with mental illnesses and mental health nurses cause delays in physical healthcare accessibility. Implications for Practice: In our discussion, we highlight the implications of these results for the practice of nurses and propose two structural solutions to improve access to physical healthcare and reduce stigmatizing experiences.

"You're Just a Mental Health Nurse": Nurses' Experiences of Associative Stigma When Accessing Physical Health Care for Their Patients.

In this article, we present the results of an interpretive phenomenology looking at mental health nurses' experiences of associative stigma when accessing physical health care for their patients. Our results illustrate the multifaceted dynamics of stigma in the context of mental health nursing and the direct impacts stigmatizing behaviors have on mental health nurses and patients alike, including an impeded access to health care services, loss of social status and personhood, and the internalization of stigma. They also highlight how nurses resist to stigma and how they help their patients cope with stigmatization.

The Forensic Psychiatric Network of Observation and Documentation: At the Intersection of Review Board Hearings and Nursing Practice.

ABSTRACT: Forensic psychiatric nursing is a specialty at the junction of two well-researched intersecting systems with two mandates: criminal justice and health care. Nurses' involvement at one of the systems' points of juncture, review board (RB) hearings, has largely been left unexplored. At RB hearings, a panel of legal and healthcare professionals determines if persons unfit to stand trial (UST) or not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCR) represent significant threats to the safety of the public and orders conditions aimed at keeping the community safe. The aim of this article is to present the results of a critical ethnography that explored how psychiatric and public safety discourses construct the identity of persons UST or NCR during RB hearings as well as nurses' contribution to such identity construction. The main finding is that the forensic psychiatric structure leverages nursing interventions and documentation as evidence of deviancy, so that persons UST or NCR can be objectified and produced as dangerous. Structures sustaining the forensic psychiatric system inscribe nursing care within a disciplinary scheme, rendering the care-and-custody dichotomy insufficient to explain the complex processes at play in forensic psychiatry. These findings have implications for the practice of nurses working in forensic psychiatric settings and for that of other nurses who practice on the medicolegal borderland.

A critical ethnographic perspective on risk and dangerousness in forensic psychiatry.

In the Canadian forensic psychiatric context, the concepts of risk and dangerousness interact, intersect, and morph into the notion of significant threat to the safety of the public. Stemming from the results of a critical ethnography of the Ontario Review Board, this article unpacks the central role of forensic psychiatric nursing, as an example of a 'psych' discipline (e.g., psychiatry and psychology), in a system that is built to produce risky persons and to legitimize their detention and supervision. By using excerpt of interviews conducted with nurses, ethnographic observations of Review Board hearings, and other documentary artifacts, the findings illustrate how rationalizations of risk and dangerousness are contingent on space, time, and observer. Depending on the time of the assessment or on the health-care professional who performs it, different elements including, but not limited to, mental illness, interpersonal relationships, financial instability, and sexual vulnerability, are relied upon in very fluid, interchangeable, and discretionary ways to justify findings of dangerousness. Such a dynamic expands the reach of psychiatry's legitimacy at identifying risky conduct and controlling risky persons to domains very loosely associated with the notion of dangerousness. The work of Foucault and Castel provides the theoretical backdrop on which rests the discussion and the implications for nursing.

An Integrative Review of Mental Health Nurses' and Other Professionals' Experience of Associative Stigma.

Mental health nurses report experiencing stigmatization both from within and outside the profession, and associative stigma provides one way to explore that experience. To better understand the current state of the literature on mental health care professionals' experiences of associative stigma, and particularly on nurses' experience of this phenomenon, an integrative review of the literature on the subject was conducted. The results detail factors associated with associative stigma, the effects of associative stigma on nurses and caregivers of persons with mental illnesses, and the quantification of associative stigma. This article concludes by discussing implications for nursing practice, education, and research.

(Re)construction identitaire et pratique infirmière en psychiatrie légale : réflexion critique sur les commissions d'examen.

Introduction : The caritative impact of nursing care provided in forensic mental health settings is rarely questioned.Context : Caritative nursing care is indirectly regulated by the Review Board (RB), a para-judicial court which ensures public safety.Objective : This study presents a critical reflection on the political and social effects of the RB, forensic psychiatry hospitals and practices of forensic mental health nurses.Method : The reflection is centered on the concepts of biopower, degradation ceremonies, moral career and identity (re)construction.Results : ‘Therapeutic’ nursing practices are useful for disciplinary purposes in the forensic psychiatric hospital, insofar as they permit the identification and management of dangerous persons. However, the practices also fall within the biopolitical scope of the RB, since they assist the latter in ensuring public safety.Discussion : The forensic psychiatric environment can prove problematic for nurses, requiring a double allegiance, whereby their responsibilities to patients (consent and confidentiality) and to the institution (protection of the public) can lead to tension.Conclusion : The analytical framework of the study allows for a reassessment of other presumed processes in psychiatric environments, which nonetheless constitute just as many rituals of identity (re)construction.

HIV Care Nurses' Knowledge of HIV Criminalization: A Feasibility Study.

HIV-related criminal laws in some jurisdictions may hamper population health efforts to manage HIV and bring about an AIDS-free generation. HIV care nurses have an instrumental role to play in ensuring equitable care and health for all in a context of HIV. The purpose of our study was to determine HIV care nurses' knowledge of HIV-related criminal laws. Ecosocial theory and content expert opinion guided development of a questionnaire to assess nurses' knowledge of HIV-related criminal laws. A total of 174 HIV care nurses from Canada (n = 23) and the United States (n = 151) completed the questionnaire. Knowledge gaps were observed in several aspects of HIV-related criminal laws that can influence nursing clinical practices. Nurses should increase their knowledge of HIV-related criminal laws to ensure the success of population health initiatives and to reduce stigma and discrimination experienced by people living with HIV.