Unintentional participant observation: a research method to inform peer support in mental health?
| Published date | 15 May 2019 |
| Date | 15 May 2019 |
| Pages | 81-85 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-01-2019-0001 |
| Author | Andrew Voyce |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Social inclusion |
Unintentional participant observation:
a research method to inform peer support
in mental health?
Andrew Voyce
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to validate peer support in mental health care.
Design/methodology/approach –Literature review and meta-analysis methodology are used.
Findings –The unintentional nature of peer support is a valid methodology for the understanding of mental
health issues and mental health care.
Research limitations/implications –The limitation is that peer experience should be accepted as a valued
method for research.
Practical implications –Professional domains may not keep a monopoly of research approaches in
mental health.
Social implications –Peer support may mean more avenues for empowerment of mental health
service users from peer role models who have unintentional acquaintance with mental health issues
and care.
Originality/value –This research refers to ethnographic precedents to describe methodology relevant to
twenty-first century peer support in mental health. It is original in valuing the unintentional participant
observation acquired from experience of the mental health system.
Keywords Ethnography, Mental health, Peer support, Lived experience
Paper type Viewpoint
“With akathisia there is never any peace from this insistent urge to move, be it rock backwards
and forwards in a chair, shuffle around the wards, kneel and huddle in a chair or go for a walk. It is
like a tinnitus of the body; there is never a moment of inner silence”(Peter Chadwick, British
Psychological Society, 2014, p. 96). What Peter is able to describe cannot be experienced
vicariously. So-called objective methods like the Barnes Akathisia scale ignore the personal effect
written in Peter’s words, it is impossible to replicate the symptoms in Peter’s piece or to
understand the feelings except first hand. A caregiver or professional in mental health could not
have written this authentic memorandum of lived experience.
This essay will seek to explore how issues such as Peter’s can validate the place of peers in
delivering mental health services. It will draw on the methodology of participant observation and
ethnography to evidence the legitimacy of qualitative methods evolving from the narratives of
mental health service users. I will seek to show how this can underpin the validity of peer workers
in a clinical setting. That is to say that peer workers will have lived experience of mental
health issues, and association with the mental health system of care. They will have acquired this
status unintentionally.
An established methodology in social science, Ethnography or Participant Observation has roots
in the work of Talcott Parsons, Malinowski and other researchers of developing societies.
Participant observation was taken a big step forward with the work of Erving Goffman and Ken
Kesey in the 1950s and 1960s when they embedded themselves in psychiatric institutions. Their
first hand observation of the social networks within mental hospitals remains a benchmark in the
twenty-first century.
Andrew Voyce is based at
Creative Bexhill CIC,
Bexhill, UK.
DOI 10.1108/MHSI-01-2019-0001 VOL. 23 NO. 2 2019, pp. 81-85, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2042-8308
j
MENTALHEALTH AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
j
PAG E 81
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