TY - JOUR A2 - Blasey, Christine M. AU - Kogstad, Ragnfrid AU - Ekeland, Tor-Johan AU - Hummelvoll, Jan Kaare PY - 2014 DA - 2014/05/28 TI - The Knowledge Concealed in Users’ Narratives, Valuing Clients’ Experiences as Coherent Knowledge in Their Own Right SP - 786138 VL - 2014 AB - Objective. As the history of psychiatry has been written, users have told their stories and often presented pictures incompatible with the professional or official versions. We ask if such a gap still exists and what the ethical as well as epistemological implications may be. Study Design. The design is based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, with a qualitative content analysis of the narratives. Data Sources. The paper draws on user narratives written after the year 2000, describing positive and negative experiences with the mental health services. Extraction Methods. Among 972 users answering a questionnaire, 492 also answered the open questions and wrote one or two stories. We received 715 stories. 610 contained enough information to be included in this narrative analysis. Principal Findings. The stories are coherent, containing traditional narrative plots, but reports about miscommunication, rejection, lack of responsiveness, and humiliation are numerous. Conclusions. The picture drawn from this material has ethical as well as epistemological implications and motivates reflections upon theoretical and practical consequences when users’ experiences do not influence professional knowledge to a larger degree. SN - 2356-685X UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/786138 DO - 10.1155/2014/786138 JF - Advances in Psychiatry PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -