Observing the Family

Abstract

Reviews of the literature concerned with families and serious mental illness (Biegel, Sales and Shulz 1990; Hatfield and Lefley 1987; Perring, Twigg and Atkin 1990) reveal a great volume of research, but very little of it sheds light on the experience, or the perspective, of families (Cook, Pickett and Cohler 1997). This stands in contrast to the growing literature that explores the perspective of the mental health service user (Barham and Hayward 1991; Goldie 1986; Reed and Reynolds 1996; Rogers, Pilgrim and Lacey 1993; McCourt-Perring 1993). This deficiency can be understood by reference to the issues discussed in Chapter 1. Families tend to be viewed through highly ideological lenses, as they are assumed to have power to shape the subjective and affective lives of individuals (Donzelot 1980; Foucault 1979; Rose 1989) and they play such vital social roles (Lewis 1992; Wilson 1977). Too much of the research has been guided by those concerns, such that families have usually only been studied as objects of professionals’ and policy makers’ interests. This chapter will briefly outline the main areas of research on families and mental illness and will then describe the approach that guided the research that informs the subsequent chapters of the book.