Social relations in everyday activities among patients with persistent mental illness at a
psychiatric centre
Sammanfattning
Social relations benefit health but are challenging for people with persistent mental illness.
Carrying out activities with other people facilitates social relations. What is less clear, however, is
how social relations are established in everyday activities. The aim of this exploratory study is to
gain an understanding of how social relations emerge in everyday activities among people with
persistent mental illness. The study was inspired by ethnography and used participant observation
to gather data in the context of a psychiatric centre. The participants were inpatients with persistent
mental illness. By using interpretative analysis with a focus on narratives we identified one core
finding as ‘daily routines as a facilitator for social relations’, along with narratives that illustrate
dimensions of the core finding. These were ‘caring’, ‘belonging’ and ‘memory-sharing’. The study
highlights how the context with its focus on everyday routines creates social opportunities that
facilitate the emergence of social relations.