Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Psychology

Advisor

David Chapin

Keywords

Environmental Psychology, government, human rights, policy, psychiatric survivor, torture

Abstract

(de)VOICED is qualitative Survivor Research grounded in an Environmental Community–Based Participatory Action Research project that utilized video as a research tool. This design emerged via planning processes with thirty–six Advisors. Fourteen people who have both substantial expertise in psychiatric systems change and have psychiatric histories, from varying locations in the U.S., took on the role of Environmental Workographers for this study. In videotaped open–ended dialogues with me about their work, I asked them to share: what environments inspired their work; what issues their work focused on; and environments that were helpful or unhelpful in achieving their goals. This process produced forty hours of raw video data. The inductive analysis was based on my own phenomenological processes and produced multiple categories of experience, which were developed into themes. These themes include Psychiatric: Places; Pain; Practices; Procedures; Products; Policies; Practitioners; Policymakers; and Profit. The deductive analysis was focused on the theories of: Goffman's (1961) “total institution,” “contaminative exposure,” and “mortification of self;” Cross's, (1971, 1991) “Black Liberation Psychology;” Sen's (1999) “Unfreedoms;” and Bronfenbrenner's (1977, 1979) “micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystems” and the messy boundaries of multiple systems, interacting in, and creating the environment of psychiatry. The deductive analysis produced evidence for a psychological spectrum ranging from psychological mortification to liberation existing in the experiences of Environmental Workographers. These analyses emerged from the data in at least three ways: what Environmental Workographers experienced in our own lives; what Environmental Workographers were speaking out against through our work activities; and why Environmental Workographers’ utterances were being silenced—(de)VOICED—by those in State power. This research relied on multi–layered participation and was positioned within an archival exploration into the organization of State–Sponsored Organized Psychiatric Industries (SSOPI). Additionally, (de)VOICED produced multiple educational videos that were evaluated by thirty experts in the field of psychiatric systems change. Herein, I explore state–sponsored and sanctioned psychiatric torture, slavery, and murder. I suggest people involuntarily involved with psychiatry are Survivors of Deadly Force with Deadly Weapons. The findings of (de)VOICED call for an immediate abolition of all forced, court ordered, coerced, and uninformed psychiatry, for people of all ages.

Comments

Videos created for this research project are available at https://vimeo.com/album/2765246.

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