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The Caring Professions, Not So Caring?: An Analysis of Bullying and Emotional Distress in the Academy

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Psychiatry Interrogated

Abstract

This chapter explores two cases of bullying at UK universities, one involving a student, the other, a faculty member; in one case, the victim’s response to bullying having been labeled “mentally ill” and in the other, the bullying itself arising as a consequence of such a label. Using institutional ethnography and discourse analysis, the authors analyze the experiences and related texts and show how the reporting of bullying and harassment is reframed as incompetency and emotional vulnerability. Correspondingly, these similar and yet opposing cases are compared, and in the process, key discourses at play within the broader context of UK higher education are unveiled.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

    Jemma Tosh

  2. Social Work, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Sarah Golightley

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  1. Jemma Tosh
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  2. Sarah Golightley
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Correspondence to Jemma Tosh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Bonnie Burstow

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Tosh, J., Golightley, S. (2016). The Caring Professions, Not So Caring?: An Analysis of Bullying and Emotional Distress in the Academy. In: Burstow, B. (eds) Psychiatry Interrogated. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41174-3_8

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