Meeting boundaries and social inclusion: An empirically grounded reflection on the role transformations of people with mental health problems

Walker, Carole;Thunus, Sophie
(2019) ICIC19: International Conference on Integrated Care — Location: San Sebastian, Espagne (1.April.2019)

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This contribution offers an empirically grounded argument in which meetings are considered as events linking differences [1] and thus contributing to the ongoing displacement of boundaries between self and system, and between system and environment. It draws on a research that aims to evaluate a mental health reform in the Brussels Region, through professional and organizational practices subsequent to a shift from institutionalized to community-based mental health care. A key objective underlying this reform is the inclusion of service users within wider society. The research methods were designed to gather a diversity of mental health service users and professionals through meeting events [1, 2, 3], which combined the use of focus groups and ethnographic meetings. Circulating through meetings enables participants, from contrasting professional status and with diverse experiences with mental health services, to meet different ways of viewing the world and of understanding mental health. As a result, participant interactions in a given setting create meetings events, or interrelated systems of communication, allowing for opportunities to observe and make sense of individual narratives and the social context in which they unfold in a new light. Processing newly observed differences entails the continuous displacement of boundaries within and surrounding meetings. This contribution discusses how the research process focusing on meetings contributes to displacing boundaries between self, system and environment. Through the incremental changes this entails, the research process offers new perspectives on the very meaning of mental health, on the care system being assessed, and on the political objective of social inclusion. References 1. Luhmann, N. (2006). System as difference. Organization, 13(1), 37-57. 2. Schwartzman, H. B. (1989). The meeting. In The Meeting (pp. 309-314). Springer, Boston, MA. 3. Freeman, R. (2008). Learning by meeting. Critical policy analysis, 2(1), 1-24. 4. Haug, C. (2013). Organizing spaces: Meeting arenas as a social movement infrastructure between organization, network, and institution. Organization Studies, 34(5-6), 705-732.
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Walker, C., & Thunus, S. (2019). Meeting boundaries and social inclusion: An empirically grounded reflection on the role transformations of people with mental health problems. ICIC19: International Conference on Integrated Care, San Sebastian, Espagne. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/54774