{"title":"“It Was Really Sick:” Managing Moral Evaluations during Personality Disorder Interviews","authors":"Maarit Lehtinen","doi":"10.1002/symb.703","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Moral aspects are closely related to psychiatric assessment. Personality disorders, especially, form a morally loaded category, as the diagnostic process involves questioning behaviors that go against social norms. Consequently, being interviewed about these matters may be face‐threatening for the patients. However, the study of the role of morality in psychiatric face‐to‐face interactions has been scarce. This paper explores how the patients and nurses orient themselves to moral matters during personality disorder interviews in two Finnish psychiatric outpatient clinics. This article uses Erving Goffman's frame theory to differentiate how different orientations come into play during the interviews. Conversation analysis forms the methodological basis for the work. In personality disorder interviews, it is possible to observe information‐gathering, moral, and everyday interaction frames. The nurses have different approaches in receiving the patients' moral considerations. They may maintain a rather neutral approach, but there are also cases of both challenging tones and more supportive and affiliating responses. Making visible how moral themes are discussed in real life enables a nuanced evaluation of psychiatric practices.","PeriodicalId":47804,"journal":{"name":"Symbolic Interaction","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Symbolic Interaction","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.703","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Moral aspects are closely related to psychiatric assessment. Personality disorders, especially, form a morally loaded category, as the diagnostic process involves questioning behaviors that go against social norms. Consequently, being interviewed about these matters may be face‐threatening for the patients. However, the study of the role of morality in psychiatric face‐to‐face interactions has been scarce. This paper explores how the patients and nurses orient themselves to moral matters during personality disorder interviews in two Finnish psychiatric outpatient clinics. This article uses Erving Goffman's frame theory to differentiate how different orientations come into play during the interviews. Conversation analysis forms the methodological basis for the work. In personality disorder interviews, it is possible to observe information‐gathering, moral, and everyday interaction frames. The nurses have different approaches in receiving the patients' moral considerations. They may maintain a rather neutral approach, but there are also cases of both challenging tones and more supportive and affiliating responses. Making visible how moral themes are discussed in real life enables a nuanced evaluation of psychiatric practices.
期刊介绍:
The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction is a social science professional organization of scholars interested in qualitative, especially interactionist, research. The society organizes panels and sessions at annual conferences such as the American Sociological Association and Midwest Sociology Society Annual Meetings, and each Spring holds the Couch-Stone Symposium. As the main voice of the Symbolic Interactionist perspective, Symbolic Interaction brings you articles which showcase empirical research and theoretical development that resound throughout the fields of sociology, social psychology, communication, education, nursing, organizations, mass media, and others.