The Socializing Effect of Psychiatric Treatment

In his book from 1996, <REF><BOOK><AU><SNM><BTL>The Psychiatric Team and the Social Definition of Schizophrenia, the Australian psychiatrist and anthropologist, Robert Barret, concluded that the most important effect of psychiatric treatment was that the patient acquired an understanding of personality and illness as two different things that could be held apart from each other. Between 1997 and 2007 we collected a sample of 90 interview with professionals and patients in different phase of contact with public mental health services, and this sample of interviews have now been analyzed to get a deeper understanding of the transformation of identity and illness narratives in the meeting between patients and professionals in the rather advanced psychiatric services at this time. The presentation will review the results of this investigation.