A Focus Group Study of Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients, Research Paper Example

The study “Courtesy Stigma: a Focus Group Study of Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients” will be analyzed for the purposes of this paper.  The first section will deal with the paradigm, research design, and sampling and analysis methods.  After that, it will look at the strengths and weaknesses of this study.

“Courtesy Stigma”: Paradigm, Research Design, Sampling and Analysis Methods”

The paradigm of this study is strongly constructivist: in other words, the underlying belief or assumption is that individuals “construct” their own reality and that there can be multiple individual interpretations of the same event of phenomenon: specifically, in this case, the study is looking at the constructs of stigmatization that are perceived by the family members of schizophrenics.  The research design in qualitative in that it focuses in on research to help understanding things from the perspective of the respondents: this study is seeking a greater understanding of the points of view of the families of the mentally ill.  Like much qualitative research, this focused on nonprobability method and in this case it was a matter of what is called convenience sampling: the easiest way to interview families of the mentally ill would be to do what the researchers did and find their subjects within mental illness advocacy groups.  Their analysis strategy was known as inductive formation, a method by which data is analyzed to find patterns or relationships, in this case to find a pattern of perceived stigmatization in families of schizophrenics.

Strengths of this Study

One strength of this study is that it did place its focus on something that has not received much attention: the perceptions of stigmatization, not of the mentally ill themselves, but of their friends, relatives, and loved ones.  In the introduction to this study, previous research by Goffman is mentioned with dealt with the “wise”, people who themselves do not have mental illness but are sympathetic to it because of the mental illness of a close friend or relative.  Not much research has been done on this and it is a very important one: social support is important for those with mental illness, and thus a knowledge of the effects of that mental illness can have on a patient’s social support network is highly useful.

Another strength of this study is that it is sensitive to the complexity of stigmatization and recognizes explicitly that this can take many forms.  In the case of this study, four general categories of stigmatization were found in the realms of interpersonal interaction, structural discrimination, public images of mental illness, and access to social roles. This is a strength because acknowledging the complexity of a problem is an important first step in coming up with viable solutions to that problem.

Weaknesses of the This Study

One weakness of this study might perhaps lie in the sampling. While using advocacy groups to help study the effects of mental illness on families, the membership in such a group would imply that these particular families are have accepted the status of their mentally ill loved one, and this is not always the case: many families are, in fact, in denial about mental health issues within the family, largely of course because of the stigma associated with it. It would be interesting to do a broader study — perhaps with the use of primary care physicians who, perforce, have to deal with mental health issues in their patients– on overall family perceptions and incidence of both denial of and acceptance of mental illness within families.

Another weakness in this study is that it focused entirely on parents, spouses and siblings of the mentally ill, when in reality a person’s social support network is much broader than just those whom one it related to by blood or marriage: doing a similar study but expanding it to include other members of the social network, like good friends, co-workers, or fellow members of a patient’s place of worship, for instance, might also yield valuable information on how mental illness has an effect on other members in a patient’s community.

Conclusion

This study shed an interesting light on something that does not always receive the proper attention in research circles: the effects that mental illness can have not only on those with mental illness but on their families.  Understanding the harm that stigmatization can have on those around the mentally ill patient could help greatly in trying to find effective ways for both families and patients to cope, and this study certainly contributes to that body of knowledge.

References

Angermeyer, M. et.al.  (2003). “Courtesy Stigma: A Focus Group Study of Relatives of Schizophrenic Patients”. Social Psychiatry Epidemiology. 38: 593-602