Abstract
A significant body of scholarship has examined the ways in which lesbian, gay, and transgender identities are taken up in the discipline of psychiatry; however, this work has largely not attended to bisexual identities. This chapter addresses this research gap through a content analysis of chart documentation for twelve bisexual individuals who accessed mental health care in a psychiatric hospital, examining where, when, and how bisexuality was documented in the psychiatric record. In doing so, we highlight how common social constructions of bisexuality (e.g., as a state of confusion, as invisible) are reinforced by the institution of psychiatry, as well as how meaningful attention to bisexuality (or in contrast, inattention) may contribute to the patient- and practitioner-defined success of a psychiatric admission.
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The authors wish to thank Rebecca Bagnarol for administrative assistance in the preparation of this chapter.
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Ross, L.E., Costa, L. (2021). “Slighted and Unheard”: The Psychiatrization of Bisexuality. In: Daley, A., Pilling, M.D. (eds) Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83692-4_4
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