Learning from stories of mental distress in occupational therapy education
| Pages | 220-233 |
| Date | 12 September 2016 |
| Published date | 12 September 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JMHTEP-02-2016-0010 |
| Author | Susan Walsh |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Mental health education |
Learning from stories of mental distress
in occupational therapy education
Susan Walsh
Dr Susan Walsh is a Senior
Lecturer at the Department of
Allied Health, Faculty of Health
and Wellbeing, Sheffield Hallam
University, Sheffield, UK.
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to describe processes of learning from personal experiences of
mental distress when mental health service users participate in occupational therapy education with tutors
and students who have also had experiences of mental distress.
Design/methodology/approach –A post-structural theoretical perspective was applied to stories which
emerged from the research process. Semi-structured group and individual interviews were used with three
service users, three students and three tutors (including the author) who had all had, at some time in their
lives, experiences of mental distress.
Findings –Stories based on previously hidden personal experiences of mental distress began to shift
dominant understandings. Further, as educators, service users challenged whose authority it is to speak
about mental distress and permitted different narrative positions for students and tutors. However,
technologies of power and technologies of self of powerful discourses in professional educationcontinued to
disqualify and exclude personal knowledges. Learning from stories requires a critical approach to storytelling
to expose how hidden power relations maintain some knowledges as dominant. Further, learning requires
narrative work, which was often hidden and unaccounted for, to navigate complex and contradictory
positions in learning.
Social implications –Although storytelling based on personal experience can help develop a skilled and
healthy mental health workforce, its impact will be limited without changes in classrooms, courses and higher
education which support learning at the margins of personal/professional and personal/political learning.
Originality/value –Learning from stories of mental distress requires conditions which take account of the
hidden practices which operate in mental health professional education.
Keywords Mental healtheducation, Occupational therapy, Service user involvement,Personal experience,
Storytelling,Mental distress
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Recent UK higher education and mental health policies (e.g. DfES, 2004; DH, 2011) have
produced two important practices in professional education: service users are invited into
learning spaces traditionally occupied by academics and professionals; and personal experience
of mental distress has become legitimate knowledge within those learning spaces.
However, multiple professional, economic and political concerns regulate practices in complex
and contradictory ways.
Alongside government’s political concerns for greater participation of those with personal
experience of mental distress in professional education, economic concerns of marketization
position service users and students as consumers in a competitive learning culture.
Further,economic concerns which supporta competency-based knowledgeand skills framework
for professionals (College of Occupational Therapists,2006) might lead to a mechanisticapproach
Received 1 February 2016
Revised 31 May 2016
Accepted 31 May 2016
This research would not have been
possible without the involvement of
Jim, Karen, Pauline, Caroline,
Kevin, Phil, Sally and Jane who
kindly gave their time to share their
experiences.
PAGE220
j
THE JOURNAL OF MENTALHEALTH TRAINING, EDUCATION AND PRACTICE
j
VOL. 11 NO. 4 2016, pp.220-233, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1755-6228 DOI 10.1108/JMHTEP-02-2016-0010
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