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Negotiating identity transition when leaving forensic hospitals

M Coffey, Michael Coffey Orcid Logo

Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, Volume: 16, Issue: 5, Pages: 489 - 506

Swansea University Author: Michael Coffey Orcid Logo

Abstract

This paper shows how patients work-up identities in the transition from hospital based living to establishing themselves once again in the outside community. Accounts by patients do the work of loosening deviant labels and making new claims for ordinary identities. One way this is achieved is by est...

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Published in: Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine
ISSN: 1363-4593 1461-7196
Published: 2012
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa10028
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Abstract: This paper shows how patients work-up identities in the transition from hospital based living to establishing themselves once again in the outside community. Accounts by patients do the work of loosening deviant labels and making new claims for ordinary identities. One way this is achieved is by establishing mitigation for past risky events in the form of illness explanations. Workers for their part support these explanations but nevertheless continue to focus on risk as something that is enduring and hard to shake identity label. The paper shows that achieving new identities is an on-going task of patients leaving forensic mental health care settings and essential for developing sustained community living.
College: Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences
Issue: 5
Start Page: 489
End Page: 506