Desired outcomes of drug-treatment: Normative and individual meanings

Description

Health care service providers are offering solutions to recognised problems. By setting treatment goals and processes they contribute to normative understandings of “good health” (Anderson 2012). There is a certain set of beliefs on how inclusion and empowerment takes place and these meanings are implied by and on different actors using symbolic power and therefore contribute to the understanding of what is desirable (Bourdieu 1989). Sercu & Bracke (2016) argue that treatment interactions in mental health care are not only influenced by the social positions but the systems of meaning people impose. People holding views on illness and appropriate treatment deviating from those of the treatment agency may not profit from treatments in the same way. Knowledge systems exist for every field. However, constitution of knowledge is an ongoing social process that builds on and reflects power relations within a community of practice (Jordan 1995, 56). In the context of a five-year-evaluation of an abstinence-oriented drug treatment facility in Austria available quantitative data from the patients at the beginning (n=129), at the end (n=56) and one year after the therapy was analysed (n=41). To gain a better insight on treatment processes, additionally, qualitative interviews (n=20) were conducted with patients (current and former – successful and not successful), professionals associated with the treatment facility and professionals associated with clients after or during treatment. These data allows an approximation to the following questions from different viewpoints: How is desired outcome defined by different actors? To which extent are these definitions in accordance with “official goals”? How are different perceptions combined within the treatment process and what implications for the process and the definition of desired outcomes may be derived?

Period	07 Apr 2018
Event title	19th Congress of the Section of Epidemiology and Social Psychiatry
Event type	Conference
Location	AustriaShow on map