title: Doing fence sitting: a discursive analysis of clinical psychologists' constructions of mental health.
abstract: A growing body of research indicates that the way health care professionals conceptualize mental health might have important clinical implications. We adopted a discursive psychology approach to explore clinical psychologists' accounts of mental health and its effects. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 11 clinical psychologists in the East Midlands region of the United Kingdom. The participants constructed mental health through building up biological factors and psychosocial aspects as opposite ends of the same spectrum, and then positioned themselves as distant from these extremes to manage issues of stake and accountability. A discourse of moral concern for service users was used to negotiate the implications of having different views of mental health from service users, enabling clinicians to manage issues of accountability and demonstrate their ability to be helpful. This suggests that clinicians should be mindful of the effects of their use of language and make the contingent nature of their knowledge explicit.
authors.affiliation: University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom axel.lofgren@outlook.com.
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lofgren
authors.affiliation: University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Hewitt
authors.affiliation: University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Roshan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: das Nair
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011586:Psychology, Clinical / Q000379:methods; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: critical methods; discourse analysis; health and well-being; health care professionals; interviews, semistructured; knowledge construction; mental health and illness; psychology; qualitative analysis