TY - JOUR

T1 - Negotiating mental illness across the lay-professional divide

T2 - Role play in peer work consultations

AU - Kessing, Malene Lue

AU - Mik-Meyer, Nanna

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Patient involvement is a prominent policy aim in modern health care. Today, mental health services employ peer workers (PWs) who have personal experiences with mental illness. Based on 22 interviews with PWs and 26 audio recordings of real-life consultations, we show how PWs talk about their personal experiences as professional qualifications. Furthermore, we demonstrate how in real-life encounters, PWs and patients convert personal experiences into a professional approach through an interactionist role play that balance PWs role as former patients and current professionals. Our analysis shows that PWs combine the personal pronoun 'I' (stressing that it is personal) with the indefinite pronoun 'one' (referring to generalised patient experiences) when they recount illness experiences. This convey that PWs engage with mental illness as both a personal and professional topic. In addition, the analysis shows that PWs (and patients) use professional clues to manifest PWs' positions as professionals. Overall, the article demonstrates that instead of focussing on authentic patient relationships, as previous research has done, it is beneficial to investigate peer work from a symbolic interactionist approach revealing how PWs and patients skilfully manoeuvre the contradictions embedded in the PWs' dual role as former patients and current professionals.

AB - Patient involvement is a prominent policy aim in modern health care. Today, mental health services employ peer workers (PWs) who have personal experiences with mental illness. Based on 22 interviews with PWs and 26 audio recordings of real-life consultations, we show how PWs talk about their personal experiences as professional qualifications. Furthermore, we demonstrate how in real-life encounters, PWs and patients convert personal experiences into a professional approach through an interactionist role play that balance PWs role as former patients and current professionals. Our analysis shows that PWs combine the personal pronoun 'I' (stressing that it is personal) with the indefinite pronoun 'one' (referring to generalised patient experiences) when they recount illness experiences. This convey that PWs engage with mental illness as both a personal and professional topic. In addition, the analysis shows that PWs (and patients) use professional clues to manifest PWs' positions as professionals. Overall, the article demonstrates that instead of focussing on authentic patient relationships, as previous research has done, it is beneficial to investigate peer work from a symbolic interactionist approach revealing how PWs and patients skilfully manoeuvre the contradictions embedded in the PWs' dual role as former patients and current professionals.

KW - mental health consultations

KW - peer work

KW - real-life data

KW - role play

KW - symbolic interactionism

KW - PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

KW - EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

KW - HEALTH

KW - EXPERT

KW - SUPPORT

KW - PEOPLE

KW - PATIENT

KW - REPRESENTATIVENESS

KW - PARTICIPATION

KW - CONSTRUCTION

U2 - 10.1111/1467-9566.13456

DO - 10.1111/1467-9566.13456

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 35247209

VL - 44

SP - 815

EP - 829

JO - Sociology of Health and Illness

JF - Sociology of Health and Illness

SN - 0141-9889

IS - 4-5

ER -