0000000000223353
AUTHOR
Jan Georg Friesinger
Human-Animal Relationships in Supported Housing: Animal Atmospheres for Mental Health Recovery
Being in a relationship with an animal can promote the well-being of people. For many individuals, this usually takes place at home. This study reports about homes for people with mental health problems (with or without co-occurring substance use), who live in supported housing operated by public landlords, entailing tenancies that are usually stricter regarding their pet policies than ordinary homes. We thus addressed the following research questions through ethnographic fieldwork at seven distinct places: which types of human–animal relationships occur in supported housing, and how do they affect the tenants? We analyzed the collected data informed by the Grounded Theory approach and foun…
Materialities matter : An exploration of supported housing for people with mental health problems
Background: In the second half of the twentieth century, supported housing was founded as a comprehensive approach to people with mental health problems, who could receive help in the communities. These living places are situated in post-asylum geographies and differ not only in regard to the quality of healthcare services but also in regard to their ordinary materialities, such as surroundings, buildings, rooms and objects. Aim: The aim of this thesis was to explore and understand how materialities in terms of the human–nonhuman interplay influence the living situations of people with mental health problems as tenants in supported housing. This overall research problem was addressed by thr…
Materialities in supported housing for people with mental health problems : a blurry picture of the tenants
Our daily lives and sense of self are partly formed by material surroundings that are often taken for granted. This materiality is also important for people with mental health problems living in supported housing with surroundings consisting of different healthcare services, neighbourhoods, buildings or furniture. In this study, we explored how understandings of tenants are expressed in the materialities of supported housing. We conducted ethnographic fieldwork in seven different supported accommodations in Norway and analysed the resultant field notes, interviews, photographs and documents using Situational Analysis. The analysis showed that supported housing materialities expressed a blur…
The significance of the social and material environment to place attachment and quality of life: findings from a large population-based health survey
Abstract Background There is an international public health interest in sustainable environments that promote human wellbeing. An individual’s bond to places, understood as place attachment (PA), is an important factor for quality of life (QoL). The material environment, such as access to nature (AtN), access to amenities (AtA), or noise, and the social environment, such as social support or loneliness, has the potential to influence PA. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between these factors and QoL. Methods The study relied on data from 28,047 adults from 30 municipalities in Southern Norway obtained from the Norwegian Counties Public Health Surveys in 2019. Lat…
Studies regarding supported housing and the built environment for people with mental health problems : A mixed-methods literature review
Abstract Places where people live are important for their personal and social lives. This is also the case for people with mental health problems living in supported housing. To summarise the existing knowledge, we conducted a systematic review of 13 studies with different methodologies regarding the built environment in supported housing and examined their findings in a thematic analysis. The built environment of supported housing involves three important and interrelated themes: well-being, social identity and privacy. If overregulated by professionals or located in problematic neighbourhoods or buildings, the settings could be an obstacle to recovery. If understood as meaningful places w…
You realise you are better when you want to live, want to go out, want to see people: Recovery as assemblage
Background: The lack of social and material perspectives in descriptions of recovery processes is almost common in recovery research. Aim: Consequently, we investigated recovery stories and how people with mental health and/or addiction challenges included social and material aspects in these stories. Method: We conducted focus group and individual interviews. We investigated how the participants narrated their stories and how they assembled places and people in their recovery stories. Results: We found that narratives of recovery became assemblages where humans and their environments co-exist and are interdependent. Conclusion: As such, narratives about recovery are about everyday assembla…
Additional file 1 of The significance of the social and material environment to place attachment and quality of life: findings from a large population-based health survey
Additional file 1. Figure S3 Latent regression model showing associations between material environment and social factors as independent variables and quality of life (QoL) mediated by place attachment (PA). The model controls for sociodemographic variables. The figure shows the structural model (without the observed indicators of the latent variables) with unstandardized regression coefficients. Abbreviations: access to amenities (AtA), access to nature (AtN), social support (SOC), loneliness (LONE), education (Edu), relationship (Relat), economic capability (INCOME).