Peerstøtte som (handle)muligheden til det meningsfulde liv? Om betingelser og paradokser i et felt i udvikling

Rebekka Knudsen, Matilde Rosenkrands Mathiesen

Publikation: AndetAndet bidragForskning

Abstract

In a Danish political frame, the thesis explores the action possibilities linked to peer workers’ labor in practice and what significance it has for peer workers’ development of self-understanding and opportunities of participation in everyday life. To do this, we conduct a qualitative research study consisting of participant observations and interviews, where we as researchers participate in practice to explore which dilemmas, challenges, and paradoxes peer workers meet in their everyday lives from a first-person perspective.

With a dialectical materialistic foundation, we examine peer workers and their surroundings as mutually constituting. This means that social, cultural, and institutional conditions have a significant impact on the peer workers’ opportunities of participation, at the same time as the activity of the peer workers affects this particular practice. Our theoretical understanding is based upon central concepts from Activity Theory and Critical Psychology. With these concepts, we analyze the experiences of peer workers to pave the way for understanding how the peer workers’ participation and activity are inescapably connected to the conditions of the social practices and the political aims of the psychiatric field. Our goal is to address some of the paradoxes found in a rapidly growing field, with the hope to contribute with new knowledge.
The analytical work explicates the difficulties regarding the implementation of peer workers in praxis.

On this basis, the thesis concludes that peer workers risk becoming the easy solution to fundamental problems in the psychiatric field, caused by major structural issues in the system. Furthermore, the peer support position creates opposing action situations in which the peer worker must learn to navigate.
OriginalsprogDansk
Publikationsdatojan. 2022
UdgiverRoskilde Universitet
Antal sider77
StatusUdgivet - jan. 2022

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