Description

There are over 40 varieties of adolescent in the UK, but only a few types of adolescent unit!

This is not a ‘how to’ book. It is auto-performance ethnographic research which explores the psychiatric care of mentally ill young people in adolescent units. It tells a story of a Staff Nurse (Dean) who with the help of the young people begins to make sense of his own journey in a symbolic world of growth imagery, attachment representation (including branding culture), identity and alliance. During the course of his struggles Dean is able to use the metaphor of the ‘adolescent unit game’ to make sense of interweaving complex, subtle and yet mundane ordinariness of the ‘salvation work’ expected of care professionals. The research draws on post-modern frames of reference in an attempt to provide something contradictory, novel, challenging and indicative of trying to ‘fit in’.

This is an unusual book based on over 6 years of auto-ethnographic research by the author. As such it should be of interest to anthropological type researchers as it offers a unique insight into the struggles of collecting cultural data and structurally ordering it into semiotic frames and sites of analysis. As the above strap line suggests, this performance ethnography points up that the mental welfare of many young people could be re-defined , re-aligned and refined into alternative relationships and reproductions of power because, the research identifies that it is the negotiating of hidden universal structures which determine the representing fragments of performance.

Although a standalone book Therapy Factories is the first of a trilogy exploring the significance of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the UK (both Episode II: The Counselling Industry and Episode III: Wendy and the Mysterious Nursing Franchise are available electronically). They offer an insight for anyone participating or intending to clinically experience this specialised arena of health and social care. In addition, the descriptions and research dilemmas give an insight for researchers, students of cultural studies, mental health and psychology.