Opening the gift: social inclusion, professional codes and gift-giving in long-term mental healthcare

Placing precarity: access and belonging in the shifting landscape of UK mental health care

This paper engages with the notion of 'embodied belonging' through an ethnography of the social and material aspects of accessing mental health care in the UK. I focus on moments of access and transition in a voluntary sector organisation in London: an intercultural psychotherapy centre, serving a range of im/migrant communities. Whilst both 'belonging' and 'place' are often invoked to imply stability, I explore how material contexts of access and inclusion can paradoxically be implicated in the ongoing production of precarity-of unstable, uncertain, and vulnerable ways of being. A sociomaterial analysis of ethnographic material and visual data from two creative mapping interviews attends to material and spatial aspects of the centre and its transitory place in the urban environment. It demonstrates how these aspects of place became entangled in client experiences of access: uncertainties of waiting, ambivalence towards belonging to a particular client group, and questions around deservingness of care. This engendered an embodied and situated experience of 'precarious belonging'. I therefore argue that precarity should be 'placed', both within the concept of embodied belonging, and ethnographically, within the material constraints, impermanence, and spatial politics of projects to include the excluded in UK mental health care.

Gratitude in Health Care: A Meta-narrative Review

Research into gratitude as a significant sociological and psychological phenomenon has proliferated in the past two decades. However, there is little consensus on how it should be conceptualized or investigated empirically. We present a meta-narrative review that focuses on gratitude in health care, with an emphasis on research exploring interpersonal experiences in the context of care provision. Six meta-narratives from literatures across the humanities, sciences, and medicine are identified, contextualized, and discussed: gratitude as social capital; gifts; care ethics; benefits of gratitude; gratitude and staff well-being; and gratitude as an indicator of quality of care. Meta-narrative review was a valuable framework for making sense of theoretical antecedents and findings in this developing area of research. We conclude that greater attention needs to be given to what constitutes "evidence" in gratitude research and call for qualitative studies to better understand and shape the role and implications of gratitude in health care.

Lessons and Challenges of Disaster Relief Work in Rural China

Due to the disastrous Wenchuan earthquake that hit Sichuan, China, on May 12, 2008, approximately 70,000 people died, around 400,000 were injured, 18,467 were missing, and millions were left homeless due to the collapse of their homes. The substantial trauma and loss in the disaster area posed a challenge for disaster relief work focused on survivors’ psychological health. Many of the psychological interventions were based on Western or urban outpatient populations and were thus inappropriate for the uneducated, agriculturally based population of rural China, potentially limiting patient care and sensitivity during this postdisaster relief. This article discusses the therapeutic issues involved and finds that the collectivist nature of the rural Chinese culture and indigenized ways of working with the earthquake survivors are of paramount importance. It adds to the research literature by discussing the importance of relationships through the Chinese concept of Guanxi in the context of disaster relief work in rural China. Consistent with the concept of Guanxi, disaster relief volunteers must fully respect the world of the survivors while remaining flexible and creative in their work to build deeper connections and relationships.