Finding meaning in first episode psychosis: experience, agency, and the cultural repertoire.
John Aggergaard Larsen
Medical Anthropology Quarterly December 2004 DOI: 10.1525/maq.2004.18.4.447 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Longitudinal Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 15 |
| Population | Participants in a Danish mental health community program for early intervention in schizophrenia |
| Key findings | Argues that the concept of a "system of explanation" better captures how individuals creatively select, add, and combine cultural resources to make sense of psychosis than do "illness narrative" or "explanatory model." Delusions are described as similarly culturally derived but dogmatic and idiosyncratic to the person who holds them. |
Abstract
The article examines individuals' attempts to generate meaning following their experiences with psychosis. The inquiry is based on a person-centered ethnographic study of a Danish mental health community program for early intervention in schizophrenia and involves longitudinal interviews with 15 of its participants. The article takes an existential anthropological perspective emphasizing agency and cultural phenomenology to investigate how individuals draw on resources from the cultural repertoire to make sense of personally disturbing experiences during their psychosis. It is suggested that the concept of "system of explanation" has advantages over, for example, "illness narrative" and "explanatory model" when demonstrating how some individuals engage in the creative analytic and theory-building work of bricolage, selecting, adding, and combining various systems of explanation. Delusions are equally derived from the cultural repertoire but are constructed as dogmatic explanations that are idiosyncratic to the individual who holds them.
Citations in the library
Cited by 5
- Meaningfulness and attachment: what dreams, psychosis and psychedelic states tell us about our need for connection. Frontiers in Psychology June 20, 2024
- Making Sense of Spiritual, Metaphysical, and Eschatological Elements in Delusions: A Qualitative Study Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Psychopathology 2024
- Cross-cultural conceptualisations of schizophrenia in Cameroonian languages Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies July 17, 2023
- Subjective experience and meaning of delusions in psychosis: a systematic review and qualitative evidence synthesis. The Lancet Psychiatry May 1, 2022
- “The Awful Rowing toward God”: Interpretation of Religious Experiences by Individuals with Bipolar Disorder Pastoral Psychology May 11, 2019