Conference Agenda

Theoretical background: The diagnostic process is a crucial development in the history of illness, which shapes the personal history of patients, and indeed their very identity. Aim: Although a number of qualitative studies have attempted to explore aspects of personality disorder as a lived experience, no idiographic study of such a phenomenon has been conducted on a sample in Hungary with a focus on the actual subjective experience within the diagnostic process. The research questions include: How do psychiatric patients experience, and what meaning do they give to, their treatment in the institution? How do they interpret the diagnosis they receive? How does the diagnosis affect their identity? Methods: interpretative phenomenological analysis was used in analyzing semi-structured interviews. This study involved 6 participants, 4 women and 2 men, aged 19-32, treated in an acute psychiatric ward. Results:Three primary themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: 1)The drift and vulnerability creating the road to psychiatry 2)The diagnostic process and the experience of psychiatric inpatients, and 3)The turning point in self-awareness.Conclusions: A key condition for recovery is the acceptance and integration of an appropriate diagnosis into patient identity, significantly facilitated by the attitude and approach of caregivers during the psychiatric stay.

As a qualified clinical psychologist, working at the University of Southampton, and in my role as a research supervisor, I have some key reflections to discuss about the experiences of an insider researcher. This presentation looks to reflect on my experience of completing my qualitative doctoral thesis in 2011 on the topic of the experiences of people whose partners have taken their own lives. As a relatively new, early career researcher, and in the role as an insider researcher, having lost my partner to suicide in 2006, I faced many challenges as well as positive personal growth. Nearly 15 years on, I can better reflect on the experience, the impact it had on me and the research and offer some reflections about the support that can help others in similar positions; both researchers and supervisors.

The present study explores the immediate needs of survivors from the massacre that happend in Israel on October 7^th, 2023. During the events citizens were exposed to tangible danger and were evicted from their homes without knowing if, or when, they will return.

A survey exploring the needs of these trauma survivors was conducted a month after October, on purpose of gaining understanding of the types of help that will be beneficial for them. It included both quantitative questions in order to examine the concrete needs of the evacuees, and open-ended questions whose purpose was to let the evacuees express their needs in their own words. 800 people responded to the quantitative questions, and less than a 100 responded to the qualitative part.

The analysis of the survey generates several central themes, including concrete and existential loneliness that is present in the evacuees' stories. The need to regain a sense of control over their lives, to be the ones who tell their stories, stood in the basis of the survivors' narratives. They expressed a wish to create a bridge of agency between the lives that they had before the trauma, and the lives that they have at present, as evacuees.

Narrative inquiry assumes that lives are communicated in a storied mode. Tthis assumes a construct that has a basic plot. The presentation discusses giving titles to life narratives to understand the meaning of trauma and distress in attempting to achieve of control and mental health. It is based on qualitative data from two research projects conducted in Israel: One with 20 abused Muslim women, ranging in age from 19 to 30 years, and the other with 20 Jewish women, survivors of incest. Each interviewee was asked to choose a title for her life story and elaborate on its meaning. The results indicate that titles integrate two functions: the first reflects the interviewees’ struggle to face and make sense of helplessness and powerlessness due to past experiences of seemingly meaningless pain; the second reflects the interviewees’ struggle to construct the future, including a map of tasks, vision, and existential mission. The two functions are intertwined in the titles and reflect the need to achieve mental well-being.

The discussion of the titles for life narratives is based on the conception of Sartre's “fundamental project” as a dialectic one involving past distress arising from trauma and the creation of meaning.