AbstractsPsychology

Negotiating Family Troubles in the context of Parental Depression: A study of the performance of a Preventive Family Intervention in and through talk at an Institutional setting.

by Ann-Mari Tippett




Institution: University of Helsinki
Department:
Year: 2015
Keywords: Sosiaalipsykologia
Record ID: 1136720
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/153749


Abstract

This study applies conversation analysis (CA) methodology for examining how talk is organized between clients and professionals at a social welfare setting, where the institutional task is to deliver a preventive intervention for a group of depressed parents. The intervention itself is designed to alleviate the risk of intergenerational transmission of depression and to promote family resilience through mobilising protective factors in the family life. It was of interest to examine how the parents, in collaboration with the group facilitators, make sense of important issues and negotiate problem constructs in and through talk, while being informed by the core aims and beliefs of the intervention. Attention was also paid to the ways in which the participants are sensitive to the institutional context and their role within it. The most striking feature of the social interaction between the participants was the parents’ reluctance to comply with the intervention protocol. This was typically managed through rejecting topic shifts, maintaining long silences, or responding only minimally. Certain ways of asking questions attracted tension and defensive behaviour in the parents. The advantage of CA is its ability to elucidate problems in conversation at the level of interactional detail, through which various reasons for the parents’ passive participation are explored. This study also looked at conversational strategies used by the participants for accomplishing peer support, or the sense of sameness in experiences between the parents. It became evident that the construction of peer support was a collaborative accomplishment in which the group leaders played a major role, as they invited the parents to construct their personal stories in such manner that produced mutually relevant experiences between them. The wider implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the importance to pay attention to language organization when delivering interventions. Recommendation is made to utilise those conversational strategies which are designed to help accomplish emotional support, alignment, and trust between speakers. This paper demonstrates the potential for applied CA to be in a position to both inform practice, and to support efforts to develop and improve similar intervention models within the social sector. Tämä tutkielma soveltaa keskusteluanalyyttistä menetelmää selvittääkseen puheen jäsentymistä sosiaalialan ammattilaisten ja heidän asiakkaidensa välisessä vuorovaikutuksessa silloin, kun institutionaalisena tehtävänä on läpikäydä ennaltaehkäisevä interventio ryhmälle masentuneita vanhempia. Itse intervention tarkoituksena on tukea perheen pärjäämistä edesauttamalla suojaavien tekijöiden läsnäoloa perheen elämässä, ja siten lieventää riskiä psyykkisten sairauksien siirtymisestä sukupolvelta toiselle. Kiinnostuksen kohteena oli selvittää, kuinka vanhemmat ja ryhmänohjaajat, vuorovaikutuksellisen yhteistyön tuloksena, neuvottelevat ja luovat merkityksiä ongelmien luonteesta, samalla kun he toimivat intervention…