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RESEARCH PRODUCT
“Emotional Darkness without Solutions”: Subjective Experiences of Mental Health Crisis
Monika Knudsen GullslettMarit BorgHesook Suzie KimAnders Johan W. Andersensubject
Health PolicyEnergy (esotericism)media_common.quotation_subjectControl (management)Public Health Environmental and Occupational HealthLonelinessMental healthExistentialism030227 psychiatry03 medical and health sciencesPsychiatry and Mental health0302 clinical medicineFeelingMiddle Eastern Mental Health Issues & Syndromesmedicine030212 general & internal medicinemedicine.symptomPsychologyResearch questionSocial psychologymedia_commondescription
Abstract:The purpose of this study is to explore and describe service users’ subjective experiences of mental health crisis. The main research question is: How do people with severe mental health problems experience and understand mental health crisis? Based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology, in-depth interviews with seven participants have been carried out to encourage reflections on mental health crisis experiences. The findings reveal the crisis as being complex and multifaceted, which contains two dimensions in experiencing crisis—an existential dimension (personal) and a contextual (social) dimension. Three main themes identified through the analysis, “Feeling out of control,” “Emotional darkness,” and “Loneliness and seeking togetherness”. Mental health crisis is experienced as chaos, losing control, loss of energy, and feelings of hopelessness. During mental health crisis, one’s social life can be difficult and involve many paradoxes and daily challenges. However, the participants revea...
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-07-02 | International Journal of Mental Health |