Picturing healthcare: a photovoice study of how healthcare is experienced by service users in a mental-health low threshold service.

Background: A recent policy change dictates that all mental healthcare in Norway must be referred and documented in the medical record of the service users. This has not been the case within low threshold mental health services, which is services without referrals, social arenas where healthcare professionals are available and where service users themselves can choose to attend based on their self-reported needs. This challenges the idea of "healthcare" being a medical term as opposed to experienced and expressed by the service user.

Treatment of eating disorders: voices from a ward.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore and develop knowledge about treatment experiences of people suffering from severe eating disorders, by highlighting the patient's perspective in treatment. The study's issue is: "How do patients with severe eating disorders experience everyday hospital/in-hospital treatment, and how do they value the impact of their experiences in treatment?"

Method: The study takes a qualitative approach, where patients wrote diaries that formed the data. There were 3 participants who wrote diaries twice a day for 2 weeks.

A narrative study of mental health recovery: exploring unique, open-ended and collective processes.

: Guided by narrative theory and by use of a narrative-in-action approach, the aim of this study was to explore how mental health recovery unfolds through individuals' engagement in everyday activities.: Data were created through participant observations with four individuals while doing everyday activities, and analysed through a narrative, interpretive approach.: The findings show how mental health recovery involves unique and open-ended processes of narrative meaning-making, which unfold through an interplay between everyday activities, places and persons.

(Re-)Establishing familiarity: Resumption of occupations by older adults with physical disabilities.

Background: There is a need for in-depth understanding of how elderly persons resume their occupations while recovering from physical disabilities in their home and community. The aim of this study was to explore and understand how engaging in occupations unfolded over time for some older persons with physical disabilities in Japan.

Materials And Methods: In this narrative-in-action study four elderly participants were recruited following a mixed purposive and convenience sampling method.

Community mental health work: Negotiating support of users' recovery.

Mental health services have changed over the past decades through an increased emphasis on deinstitutionalization and normalization, and with recovery processes situated in everyday life as a new locus of support. These changes have led to a need for new knowledge and methods concerning the provision of community mental health services. The aim of the present study was to explore how community mental health workers provide support to users, by investigating professionals' own narratives of how they work.

Craft activities in groups at meeting places: supporting mental health users' everyday occupations.

Aim: People with mental health illness often lose everyday occupations that give life consistency. Recovery is therefore supposed to take place through transactions between person and environment. Such transactions might occur at meeting places.

Studying narrative-in-action in women with chronic rheumatic conditions.

In this article we aim to sculpt a possible methodology for studying how a good everyday life comes about when living with chronic rheumatic conditions (CRC). Our "how" focus acknowledges a woman with CRC as one member of a diverse population, whereby we question the biomedically based view that she differs from the population. The more frequently asked "what" question colors study designs and results in categories and characteristics regarding what she is able to do and what adaptations she has made in everyday life as a consequence of her disease.

The use of craft activities as an occupational therapy treatment modality in Norway during 1952-1960.

The purpose of the present study was to explore the use of craft activities as occupational therapy treatment modalities in Norway during the period 1952-1960. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews with six retired occupational therapists on their experiences in using crafts. Data were analysed through textual analysis and this resulted in four themes: craft activities identified as a therapeutic tool; ambivalence in how to frame the intervention; practice relative to power relationships; and occupational therapists and patients as equals.

Creativity and order in communication: implications from philosophy to narrative research concerning human occupation.

Narrative theory and methods are increasingly featured in qualitative research relating to human occupation. The present article addresses the concept of narrative in relation to some relevant foundational philosophical and theoretical roots. Specifically a twofold function of narrative as a mechanism for producing order versus creativity is highlighted.