| dc.contributor.author | Townsend, Elizabeth A. | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-21T12:36:11Z | |
| dc.date.available | 1994 | |
| dc.date.issued | 1994 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | AAINN93838 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10222/55429 | |
| dc.description | This is a study which critically analyzes the social organization of occupational therapy's mental health work. The question addressed is: What are the possibilities and constraints for enabling the empowerment of adults who attend transitional mental health programs? Six core features identified in occupational therapy literature and the actual practice of seven occupational therapists across Atlantic Canada are contructed against an 'ideal empowerment oriented practice' constructed from adult education and other literature. The thesis argues that occupational therapy's mental health work is organized to produce a central tension between contradictory patterns of practice: one pattern enables people to share power; the other controls power. | en_US |
| dc.description | Using the theory and method of institutional ethnography developed by Dorothy Smith, the analysis displays 'glimpses of possibility' for enabling people to share power. These glimpses are descriptions of actual instances of adult education in which occupational therapists educate people to become empowered in the full range of occupations which give meaning to real life. In other glimpses, occupational therapists recognize people's worth and power to act by including them as collaborators in decisions about their program goals and involvement. In some situations, occupational therapists facilitate critical reflection and real action in which people take the risks of transforming some aspects of themselves and society. | en_US |
| dc.description | Nevertheless, these educational 'glimpses of possibility' are almost submerged by the 'constraints' of controlling power through the work of 'managing medical cases'. To some extent, people's mental difficulties and interactional difficulties in everyday situations constrain their empowerment. However, fundamental constraints lie in institutional processes designed to control power. Rather than supporting the work of enabling empowerment, these processes make occupational therapy accountable primarily for the quality and efficiency of individual case management. Control is exercised through hierarchical decision making and legal processes which protect people more than they support risk taking and change. Beyond mental health services, constraints are also organized by state legislated economic and welfare practices which perpetuate the stigmatization and marginalization of psychiatric cases. | en_US |
| dc.description | Resolution of the central tension requires a shift from hierarchical processes of control to horizontal processes of partnership in mental health services and the economic and welfare practices of society. Such a shift would enhance the educational potential in occupational therapy's mental health work for enabling empowerment. | en_US |
| dc.description | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1994. | en_US |
| dc.language | eng | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Dalhousie University | en_US |
| dc.publisher | | en_US |
| dc.subject | Health Sciences, Mental Health. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Health Sciences, Rehabilitation and Therapy. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Education, Adult and Continuing. | en_US |
| dc.title | Enabling empowerment or managing medical cases? Occupational therapy's mental health work. | en_US |
| dc.type | text | en_US |
| dc.contributor.degree | Ph.D. | en_US |
