WAIT, WON'T! WANT: BARRIERS TO HEALTH CARE AS PERCEIVED BY MEDICALLY AND SOCIALLY DISENFRANCHISED COMMUNITIES.

Objectives: We explored barriers to healthcare as perceived by members of medically and socially disenfranchised communities.

Methods: We conducted focus groups with 28 women and 32 men from Northeast Ohio who identified themselves as African-American, Hispanic/Latino, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered, and/or Russian immigrant.

Results: Participants described their experiences of waiting, things they won't tolerate, when they won't participate, and what they want from providers.

A qualitative investigation of self-stigma among adolescents taking psychiatric medication.

Objective: The extant literature describes stigma in two forms, public stigma and self-stigma. Public stigma pertains to negative social behaviors, reactions, attitudes, and beliefs directed toward people with mental illness and among persons with mental illness. Self-stigma concerns the internalized effects of public stigma.

Social Support: A Mixed Blessing for Women in Substance Abuse Treatment.

Using a personal social network framework, this qualitative study sought to understand how women in substance abuse treatment describe their network members' supportive and unsupportive behaviors related to recovery. Eighty-six women were interviewed from residential and outpatient substance abuse treatment programs. Positive and negative aspects of women's social networks were assessed via open-ended questions.

Desire and disappointment: adolescent psychotropic treatment and adherence.

This paper situates medication adherence among adolescents in current cultural and political-economic debates about compliance/adherence and the formation of biomedical subjectivities. Building on prior work of the authors, this paper explores the role of desire in adherence to show how subjectivities are shaped by concordant, instrumental, or conditional forms of desire. Data is used to show how parents and adolescents compare the medicated self before and after, resulting in the formation of desire.

Are health beliefs related to adherence among adolescents with mood disorders?

This study explored the illness perceptions, attitudes towards mental health services and adherence behaviors among a group of adolescents in treatment for mood disorders in an urban city in the United States. Seventy adolescents completed a battery of questionnaires assessing demographics (e.g.

Attitudes Toward Mental Health Services and Illness Perceptions Among Adolescents with Mood Disorders.

The present study describes how adolescents perceive their mood disorders (MD; e.g., acute vs.

Adolescent attitudes toward psychiatric medication: the utility of the Drug Attitude Inventory.

Background: Despite the effectiveness of psychotropic treatment for alleviating symptoms of psychiatric disorders, youth adherence to psychotropic medication regimens is low. Adolescent adherence rates range from 10-80% (Swanson, 2003; Cromer & Tarnowski, 1989; Lloyd et al., 1998; Brown, Borden, and Clingerman, 1985; Sleator, 1985) depending on the population and medication studied.

Adolescent experience of psychotropic treatment.

Despite growing concern over the treatment of adolescents with psychiatric medications, little research has examined youth understandings and interpretations of mental illness and psychotropic treatment. This article reports the exploratory findings of semi-structured and open-ended interviews carried out with 20 adolescents diagnosed with one or more psychiatric disorders, and who were currently prescribed psychiatric medications. Grounded theory coding procedures were used to identify themes related to adolescent subjective experience with psychiatric medications.

Subjective experience of recovery from schizophrenia-related disorders and atypical antipsychotics.

Aims: This article investigates the subjective experience of the process of improvement and recovery from the point of view of persons diagnosed (according to research diagnostic criteria) with schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorders.

Methods: A community study of persons using psychiatric services was conducted for a sample of ninety subjects taking atypical antipsychotic medications. Sociodemographic data and clinical ratings were collected to complement the qualitatively developed Subjective Experience of Medication Interview (SEMI), which elicits narrative data on everyday activities, medication and treatment, management of symptoms, expectations concerning recovery, stigma, and quality of life.

The Subjective Experience of Youth Psychotropic Treatment.

The psychotropic treatment of youth is increasing dramatically. This article examines child and adolescent psychopharmacological research and argues that social work practice and research must examine the complex relationships, social and psychological, in youth pharmacologic treatment. Regarding identity formation, this article explores the developmental consequences when youth adopt an illness narrative to make sense of everyday medication treatment.

The social grid of community medication management.

Practitioners involved in case management at a community mental health center organized 5 elements of a psychotropic medication experience. Using case records, interview, and observational data, the authors examined an underresearched and especially problematic area of the management process: the interpretation of a medication's effect. They describe the divisions of labor, a grid of social relations, and spaces related to management, and they describe how the limits and potential of medications are realized in the intensity of monitoring and the knowledge produced in the day-to-day practices among all participants.