"It's not just about the money": the meaning of work for people with severe and enduring mental health problems - an interpretative phenomenological analysis
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: It's not just about the money": the meaning of work for people with severe and enduring mental health problems -an interpretative phenomenological analysisAim -to explore the meaning of work for people living with severe and enduring mental health problems.Method -Ten participants were recruited and interviewed initially; eight at six months; four at eighteen months.A longitudinal approach was chosen to facilitate capturing changes in the participants' life worlds.The method used was interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).Findings -Three overarching themes were identified.Building and maintaining an occupational identity expressed the ways in which participants used occupations as the building blocks of an evolving identity; some viewed work as a socially valued way of doing this.Most of the participants had aspirations towards work, and occupation in a broad sense was seen as an essential component of recovery from mental ill health.Work, and other ways of belonging encapsulated the need to feel connected to others.Many of the participants envisaged working as a way of achieving this.Others had experienced work as isolating and excluding, and had found leaving or changing work roles to be liberating. Work values, personal values; the need for accordreflected the attitudes that participants held about the role of work in their lives, and in society.These views reflected ambivalent feelings about working which often seemed to stem from distressing experiences of work.The longitudinal nature of the study facilitated engagement with the developing narratives and exploration of the changes and consistencies in the participants' meaning making about work.Conclusion -work may contribute to recovery, as can other forms of occupational engagement.Attention to identity building and fostering a sense of belonging is important.Implications relate to the need for service providers to utilise a flexible approach to occupational participation.occupational perspective of health and well-being; however I have also used an understanding of cognition as an embodied experience to explore the links between active engagement in occupations, including work, to provide an understanding of the potential for occupational engagement as an aid to recovery from mental ill health.The rationale for a longitudinal approach to the study is also presented. Chapters Six, Seven and Eight -FindingsThese three chapters present the findings from each of the three waves of interviews.From a sample of ten people initially recruited to the study and interviewed at the outset, eight took part in the second interviews, four in the third.One of the interview transcripts from the second wave of interviews was not included in the analysis; the reason for this is explained in Chapter Five.Thus these chapters report findings from analysis of twenty one interviews from ten individuals with severe and enduring mental health problems.Chapters Six and Seven end with a preliminary discussion of findings which should enable the reader to follow the narrative of the participants' experiences as the thesis develops. Chapter Nine -DiscussionThe final chapter begins by drawing together the themes from all three waves of interviews into three overarching themes -Building an occupational identity, Work values, personal values; the need for accord, and Work and other ways of belongingand shows how I developed the three themes.These three themes are then used to frame the final discussion and constitute the main contribution of the thesis to the evidence base.By exploring work from an occupational perspective, my analysis facilitates a deconstruction of work as an occupation, providing a more nuanced view of some of the aspects or elements of work that mattered to the participants, and how they managed their lives in the absence of work.Also in the discussion chapter I return to the literature to see how my findings are represented there, confirming existing findings, diverging from existing findings or adding new insights.I have found the literature on self determination theory and work values theory has enabled me to explore my findings further and make links with existing evidence.Occupational identity theory and the concept of occupational integrity have also been used to discuss my findings.An evaluation of the strengths and limitations of the study is considered, and the thesis ends with identified areas for further research, implications for education and practice.
Author: Alison Blank
Language: English
Subfield: Occupational Therapy
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W343488643