| 1. |
- Karlsson, Lis Bodil
(författare)
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Berättelser om inre röster : Ett fenomenologiskt och kommunikativt perspektiv
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The phenomenon of hearing voices is examined in a communicative way and with a phenomenological perspective. Data consist of talks in focus groups and of written autobiographical texts. (I) The aim of the first article, “More real than the reality”- A study of voice hearing, is to describe and analyse how participants in focus groups account for and understand their voice hearing experiences. Voice hearing can be understood as a continuum of various experiences, including thoughts about the self and the inner and the outer world. Voice hearing can be experienced as ‘more real than the reality’. (II) The aim of the second article, Från rösthörarnas värld - en analys av självbiografiska brev om hörselhallucinationer [From the world of the voice hearers - en analysis of personal letters on auditory hallucinations], is to analyse how people can describe and interpret inner voices in texts. The terms monologue, dialogue, polyphony and cacophony characterise variations of voice hearing. (III) The aim of the third article, ‘Schizophrenic or occult harassed?’ A narrative study of an autobiographical text about auditory and visual hallucinations, is to show that important insight into voice hearing can be gained when one describes and analyses how a subject writes. The analysis showed how writing was a way of adapting to inner voices and to the psychiatric diagnosis the author had received. (IV) The aim of the fourth article, Leva med inre röster. Utforskande av röstupplevelsers mening [Living with inner voices. A quest for the meaning of voice experiences], is to describe and analyse some methods and attitudes that the subjects use in order to cope with inner voices. It was important that the participants accepted their voices as a part of life. The participants also must cope with being stigmatised.
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| 2. |
- Abrahamson, Maria, 1946-
(författare)
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Alkoholkontroll i brytningstid : ett kultursociologiskt perspektiv
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation is a product of four separate cultural studies, intended to throw light on the changes in Swedish alcohol policy taking place in recent years.Paper 1 discusses factors contributing to the rapid proliferation of restaurants in Sweden in the 1980’s and the subsequent tensions arising from a restrictive legislation, an increasingly liberal legal praxis and the new, public alcohol culture. Urban transformations and changes in public life, the transition from modem to late modernism, the emergence of a new middle class and the redefinition of women’s use of alcohol were among the crucial developments. Beginning in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, important steps away from the traditionally strict control of restaurants stimulated competition and led to a loosening up of Swedish restaurant culture. By the 1980’s, the restrictive laws governing restaurants had begun to lose legitimacy as legal praxis was applied in an increasingly liberal spirit. The establishment of the Stockholm Water Festival, which allowed central parts of the city to be transformed into a gigantic beer hall, is one example of this. As in many other countries, age limits have now become almost the only actual restriction on the availability of alcohol. Today, rather than protection, the aim of alcohol policy - especially with regard to restaurants - is keeping damage to a minimum.Paper 2 is based on participant observation in three types of restaurants in Stockholm’s city centre. These are characterised as ‘the fashionable bar’, ‘the folksy bar’, and ‘the ethnic bar’. The study takes its starting point in Goffman’s (1956) concepts of ‘performance’, ‘setting’ and ‘personal front’, and how people consciously or unconsciously choose different milieus as a way of controlling the impression of themselves they wish to project. The fashionable bar clearly functioned as an arena for demonstrating professional and social success. The folksy bar could be used as the setting for a form of play in which company colleagues could temporarily set aside their differences in status. The closed room of the ethnic bar encouraged ‘time-out’ behaviour - seeming to serve as a second home, but also as a sex market for contacts between African men and Nordic women.Paper 3 presents an analysis of how five different occupational groups discuss their alcohol habits in serious compared to humorous speech. The occupational areas are media, politics, business, culture and civil service. In serious speech, the speakers tended to value cautious drinking, setting sharp limits as to how and when use of alcohol is appropriate. In humorous speech, the situation was largely the opposite - the interviewees often presenting themselves as being under external constraints with regard to alcohol. The situations that provoked humour are also where we find controversy in serious speech. Discrepancies between alcohol habits and the role model one represents as a parent gave rise to a number of jokes. The parts of serious discourse that concerned other people displayed a very different content, dealing with excessive drinking, not being able to handle alcohol and not being permitted to drink alcohol - a content reflected in humorous form when the interviewees talked about themselves.Paper 4, based on the same interview data as Paper 3, examines the issue of youth and alcohol. Common dividing lines between the groups could be observed, such as describing the problem as an individual, personal or family affair versus seeing it as a problem for the society, or placing responsibility for problem control on the individual as opposed to placing responsibility on the society. Those active in cultural pursuits viewed teenage use and abuse of alcohol as a social problem, but placed responsibility for its solution on a private, individual level. Journalists saw the problem as belonging within the family, which is also where they placed responsibility for the solution. The politicians clearly perceived teenage drinking as a problem for the society and placed responsibility for solutions on outer agents, such as legislation and extensive information campaigns. Civil servants described the problem both in terms of belonging within the family and as a problem for the society. Business executives varied between the level on which they described the problem and the level on which they sought solutions. In considering the problem from the point of view of the consumer, they stressed individual responsibility. But as the discussion progressed, they came to see teenage drinking both as a family problem and a problem for the society and to place responsibility on outer authorities.The four studies are linked together in an introductory chapter within the common framework of Swedish alcohol control policy.
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| 3. |
- Andersson, Gunnel, 1955-
(författare)
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Vardagsliv och boendestöd : En studie om människor med psykiska funktionshinder
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the wake of deinstitutionalization, people with psychiatric disabilities are, to a great extent, living in the community. In this thesis everyday life of people with psychiatric disabilities, living in independent housing with community-based social support to manage their daily life, is investigated. Special attention is paid to the characteristics and meaning of community-based social support. Through participating observational studies, interviews and time-geographic diaries, data have been gathered about everyday life of seventeen men and women. It is the interpersonal social conditions that have been the main target of the study, addressed as social networks and social support. Everyday life conditions are dependent on social as well as physical and material circumstances. Although the social conditions are emphasized in the study they are not looked upon as isolated dimensions but as part of everyday life circumstances. The everyday life perspective offers an opportunity to reveal the structures within which everyday life takes place. The time-geographic concepts “community-organized projects” and “individual-organized projects” were used to investigate the structures of everyday life, resulting in four substructures. Four types of everyday life and four patterns of networks connected to the different substructures were identified, showing great variations. The characteristics of community-based social support can be summarized as “the doing”, “the talking” and “the being with” in a reciprocal type of relationship. The meaning of support is shortly described as solution of and relieving problems, social companionship, security, protection and control. Community-based social support show similar importance regardless of the type of everyday life when it comes to solution of problems and different importance when it comes to aspects of support such as social companionship.
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| 4. |
- Andersson, Peter, 1980-
(författare)
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Hot, våld och emotionellt arbete på de särskilda ungdomshemmen : Personalens berättelser
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to describe how staff working at secure units define violence, the ways in which they say violence affects them emotionally, and the ways they emotionally handle violence. The secure units (särskilda ungdomshem) are managed by the Swedish National Board of Institutional care (Statens Institutionsstyrlese, SiS). The daily work of staff members is often described in terms of various dilemmas, challenges and tensions. Staff work in a context where they are at the intersection between care and punishment. How they respond to these dilemmas, challenges and tensions can affect how they handle violence. The organization (i.e. the institution) requires staff to induce or suppress emotions in order to sustain outward attitudes that produce a proper state of mind. Therefore, secure units are defined as an emotional place for both youth and staff.The dissertation consists of four articles that explore different forms and directions of violence in the daily work of staff, and the ways that staff describe the impact of violence on their professional and private lives. The empirical data consist of 53 individual staff interviews (articles 1–3) and five focus groups with 27 staff members (article 4). Three overarching theoretical concepts are deployed: emotional work, narrative and violence.The main findings from these papers can be summarized as follows: Staff talked about the extent and forms of violence that characterize their everyday work (articles 1 and 4), mostly in the form of stories where they described being exposed to both psychological and material violence. The frequency of this violence ranged from occasional to daily. Staff also talked about how they emotionally handled both perceived and acted-out violence, and how such violence can affect their professional role (articles 2 and 3). A common strategy seems to be role-taking. That is, staff members think they are exposed to violence in their role as “staff”, not as private individuals. This paves the way for the normalization of violence as a strategy for dealing with everyday professional life. Furthermore, staff attribute violence to youth in an explicit way. This means that staff members find it difficult to reflect on their own responsibility and the fact that they are, in fact, co-creators of most incidents of violence.The overall results of the four papers are additionally organized around three themes: (1) the position of the young person: perpetrator, (2) working with violence in a caring context and (3) prohibited workplace emotions. Traces of these themes can be found in all four articles and they are clearly linked to the dissertation’s theoretical concepts. In conclusion, it is possible to describe these three themes as an expression of organizational shortcomings in which the staff are trapped.
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| 5. |
- Andersson Vogel, Maria, 1980-
(författare)
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Särskilda ungdomshem och vårdkedjor : Om ungdomar, kön, klass och etnicitet
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis follows a group of youths placed in secure unit care who have participated in a chain-of-care project aiming to better plan their discharge and aftercare. The overall aim of the thesis is to link a detailed description of these young people with an analysis of the project they participated in, and to undertake one- and two-year follow-up studies. Analytic focus is on the significance of gender, class and ethnicity. The study is mainly based on structured interviews performed at the secure units upon entry into care, discharge and at a one-year follow up. Data have also been used from criminal records and interviews with project staff.When entering care, these youths exhibited extensive problems in both family conditions and own behaviour. The major problem in boys was criminality while girls reported poor mental health. Professionals judge youth of foreign background as more criminal than youth of Swedish background despite a lack of difference in self-reported data. Some difference is also noticeable regarding class.Analysis of the project shows that out-of-home care was the most frequent intervention after leaving secure unit care, while other interventions were difficult to uphold over time. Few girls received help with their mental health problems. At the one-year follow up, the youths reported an overall better situation, although extensive problems still remained. Above all, girls’ mental health problems remained as before. At the 2-year follow up the study group was compared with a control group in order to investigate effects of the project regarding criminality and recommitment to secure unit care. The comparison shows that the project had no effect. This is discussed in relation to poor organization and the difficulty of adjusting a project like this to the target group, along with the substantial part played by gender, class and ethnicity in how the youth are construed and treated.
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| 6. |
- Backlund, Åsa, 1970-
(författare)
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Elevvård i grundskolan : Resurser, organisering och praktik
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyse the organization, resources and practice of pupil welfare work in municipal compulsory schools. In one study, telephone interviews with head masters from a random sample of 100 municipal compulsory schools have been carried out. A second study is based on material from two case studies, where the work of the pupil welfare team members and the everyday organizing of pupil welfare, are scrutinized.The distribution of special pupil welfare resources varied considerably. Almost one-third of the variation could be explained by organizational and structural variables included in a regression analysis. Practically all schools in the sample had a school nurse, while school social workers and in particular school psychologists, were available to a lesser extent. Regarding the latter two professions, the results indicate that these resources are allocated to pupils of different age groups. The involvement of different kinds of municipal service in pupil welfare work is becoming a common form of organization. The case studies show that these service units can become influential actors in the organizing of local pupil welfare work.School nurses appear to be an institutionalized resource, with regard to their presence in schools and the content of their work. The school social worker lacks a specific technology of her own that distinguishes her work from other professions. School social work is performed by several professions and for some tasks domain conflicts can arouse. These conflicts can to a certain degree be rooted in the enhanced consultative role of the pupil welfare specialists, which affects the division of labour between the actors. The pupil welfare meetings studied in the case studies where characterized by asymmetrical relationships, where little space were given for pupils and their parents to be actively involved in the decision-making process.
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| 7. |
- Berg Eklundh, Lotta
(författare)
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Kontaktfamilj : En förebyggande stödinsats eller mellanvård?
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The contact family is a special intervention for supporting children in families with social problems. The child receives an ‘extra family’ with whom he or she can spend limited periods, like one or two weekends every month, one or two weekday nights and some holiday weeks during the year. The concept is that sharing this ‘extra family’s’ everyday life helps the child to build up resiliency and become better able to handle everyday life in the biological family. The members of the contact family can serve as role models and provide good examples of how to handle such situations as family and sibling conflicts. Sometimes the child finds ‘a significant other’ in the contact family, i.e. an adult who understands the child’s needs, listens to the child’s thoughts and worries and assists in evaluating the child’s cognitive abilities. This form of social support is decided on and paid for by the Social Welfare Service in the community where the child lives with the biological family. This study concerns 50 children living in four municipalities in Sweden who had received contact families in year 2000. It is a longitudinal study conducted over a period of seven years comprising both interviews and analysis of the social service offices’ documentation on each of the 50 children in the study. The empirical material was collected on four occasions (2000, 2003, 2005 and 2007. Interviews were conducted with a number of social workers involved in the cases, 15 of the children, their biological parents and the contact parents. The theoretical foundation for the study is the ecological model of human development, which places the child in the centre surrounded by the four systems and with the contact family as a possible ‘proximal process’. The analyses were made from the perspective of the social workers’ scope of action and that of the participating children’s perspectives. The results showed that the parents who applied for a contact family (often a single parent, usually the mother) did so in order to obtain some relief from their parental duties and/or because they lacked a social network. The majority of the children had parents with social problems, such as substance addiction, a mental disorder or other health problems. As many as 30 of the children had experienced domestic violence. Nearly 40% had also experienced being placed with a contact family that in periods functioned as a short-term emergency children’s home or foster home. Only two of the children had the possibility to participate in choosing whether or not to have a contact family. Several of the children participated in the ongoing process of arranging for the contact family and in making the decision to terminate the arrangement, or to move in with the contact family as foster children or with the contact family functioning as a form of supported housing.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Billinger, Kajsa, 1949-
(författare)
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Få dem att vilja : motivationsarbete inom tvångsvården av vuxna missbrukare
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The coercive care of adult substance abusers is aimed at motivating them to seek voluntary treatment. The purpose of the present study is to throw light on how motivational work is perceived and articulated by care providers working in coercive care.To select the LVM institutions for the study, an initial survey was made of the motivational work being carried out in the entire area of substance abuser care, both coercive and voluntary care. From this survey four institutions were strategically selected on the basis of their therapeutic points of departure. The focus group method was used for the data collection.The care providers at the four LVM institutions gave different pictures of coercive care, although they worked under the same paragraph of the law. The differences could be attributed to their different therapeutic points of departure. It was impossible to discern an explicit description of motivational work at any of the LVM institutions. The care providers did not present any methods or techniques that clearly differed from what we call diagnosis, education or upbringing. In their view, everything they did aimed at increasing their clients’ motivation. There were three main tools the care providers used to accomplish their central task of transforming unmotivated clients into persons who choose not to be substance abusers: assessment, treatment and the establishing of a relationship with the client and working within its framework. The clients’ needs were described in a corresponding way. They were to be led, taught or compensated. Only one of the four LVM institutions specifically treated the clients’ substance abuse problems. At the other three institutions, substance abuse was considered either secondary to the clients’ other problems, a symptom of underlying problems, or a topic to be avoided in order to focus on future solutions. The clients’ resistance and negative attitudes to coercive care were obstacles that care providers tried to overcome by various means. They encouraged clients to regard coercion as a privilege or tried to make them feel at home, or else the care providers worked as if the coercion did not exist. All in all, the picture that emerges is that because of the coercive element the care provided was without contours, the clients did not have a range of options from which to choose. The only thing the care providers could do was to get the clients to stay at the institution, or bring them back if they ran away. The goal of getting clients to take the next step into voluntary treatment had to give way to the less tangible goal of exerting a positive influence on them - of “sowing the seeds of change”.
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| 10. |
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