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Amongst the impacts of growing up with a parent with mental health challenges is the experience of stigma-by-association, in which children and young people experience impacts of stigmatisation due to their parent's devalued identity. This article seeks to expand our understanding of this issue through an abductive analysis of qualitative data collected through a codesign process with young people. Results indicate that young people's experiences of stigmatisation can be effectively understood as experiences of epistemic injustice. Participants expressed that their experiences comprised 'more than' stigma, and their responses suggest the centrality to their experiences of being diminished and dismissed in respect of their capacity to provide accurate accounts of their experiences of marginalisation and distress. Importantly, this diminishment stems not only from their status as children, and as children of parents with mental health challenges but operates through a range of stigmatised identities and devalued statuses, including their own mental health status, sexual minoritisation, disability and social class. Forms of epistemic injustice thus play out across the social and institutional settings they engage with. The psychological and social impacts of this injustice are explored, and the implications for our understanding of stigma around family mental health discussed., (© 2023 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

Aim: The aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive review of published qualitative research studies on first episode psychosis (FEP)., Methods: A review was undertaken to describe the findings of qualitative studies in early psychosis. Keyword searches in Medline, CINAHL, ASSIA, PsychINFO databases, as well as manual searches of other relevant journals and reference lists of primary papers, were conducted., Results: Thirty-one qualitative papers (representing 27 discrete studies) were identified. The majority reported research concerning young people based in community settings. The research studies were organized according to the following generic social processes: (i) achieving identity; (ii) acquiring perspectives; (iii) doing activity; and, (iv) experiencing relationships. The papers reviewed are based on first-person accounts obtained from individuals who have experienced FEP, their family members and service providers., Conclusion: This descriptive review contributes to our understanding of the complex social processes of achieving identity, acquiring perspectives, doing activities and developing relationships as experienced by young people and the significant others in their world. The cumulative findings highlight the contextually rich and detailed information made possible through qualitative studies of FEP. They begin to account for the active engagement of individuals affected by psychosis in making sense of their experience and suggest that this experience should be understood from within young people's own framework of meaning.

Background: Autism is not always considered for girls and women until later along their clinical diagnostic pathways. Misdiagnosis or late diagnosis can pose significant disadvantages with respect to accessing timely health and autism-related services and supports. Understanding what contributes to roadblocks and detours along clinical pathways to an autism diagnosis can shed light on missed opportunities for earlier recognition. Objective: Our objective was to examine what contributed to roadblocks, detours, and missed opportunities for earlier recognition and clinical diagnosis of autism for girls and women. Design: We conducted a qualitative secondary analysis using data from a Canadian primary study that examined the health and healthcare experiences of autistic girls and women through interviews and focus groups. Methods: Transcript data of 22 girls and women clinically diagnosed with autism and 15 parents were analysed, drawing on reflexive thematic analysis procedures. Techniques included coding data both inductively based on descriptions of roadblocks and detours and deductively based on conceptualizations of sex and gender. Patterns of ideas were categorized into themes and the 'story' of each theme was refined through writing and discussing analytic memos, reflecting on sex and gender assumptions, and creating a visual map of clinical pathways. Results: Contributing factors to roadblocks, detours, and missed opportunities for earlier recognition and diagnosis were categorized as follows: (1) age of pre-diagnosis 'red flags' and 'signals'; (2) 'non-autism' mental health diagnoses first; (3) narrow understandings of autism based on male stereotypes; and (4) unavailable and unaffordable diagnostic services. Conclusion: Professionals providing developmental, mental health, educational, and/or employment supports can be more attuned to nuanced autism presentations. Research in collaboration with autistic girls and women and their childhood caregivers can help to identify examples of nuanced autistic features and how context plays a role in how these are experienced and navigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourses of research impact shape the ways in which critical qualitative research and researchers are evaluated in contemporary academic environments. Mainstream conceptualizations of research impact arise from a positivist perspective that challenges the aims and approaches of critical qualitative research. In this paper, we propose a framework for conceptualizing the impact of critical qualitative research on policy, practice, and science. After critiquing literature that presents mainstream views on research impact, we summarize a recent framework for conceptualizing the impact of critical research specifically. We then add to the Machen framework by highlighting the impacts of critical qualitative research on the institutions and practices of science. We provide examples of ways in which researchers at the Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research at the University of Toronto have made contributions to the impact of critical qualitative research on science, and conclude by addressing implications of this framework for the ways in which critical qualitative researchers can plan and evidence the impact of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma is a factor impacting the lives of many people experiencing psychiatric disorders. Trauma affects people's responses to illness as well as their interactions with services. This study aimed to explore the understandings and experiences of psychiatrists of working with trauma and emerging models of Trauma-Informed Care. An interpretive qualitative inquiry was undertaken using semi-structured in-depth interviews with psychiatrists. Four themes were identified: Making sense of trauma; A contentious relationship between trauma and mental illness; Treatment made more challenging by trauma; Trauma-Informed Care highlights tensions. Psychiatrists are familiar with the concept of trauma but there are differences in beliefs about its relationship to mental illness that are consequential for practice. Trauma-Informed Care is seen as an effort to humanise mental health services, but with perceived limited impact on psychiatrists' roles. Findings indicate need for further consultation and collaboration with psychiatrists around trauma-informed care implementation; as well as consideration of what is required to develop professional consensus on trauma and its relationship to illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are less physically active compared with their age-related peers. Despite the many benefits of physical activity, little is known about why they are predominantly inactive. To date, research has rarely included adolescent's perspectives, and little is known about how wider social, systemic, and policy forces shape physical activity. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions, meanings, and role of physical activity in the lives of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, and draw on their experiences to examine how social and cultural processes shaped their participation. Ten adolescent boys with autism spectrum disorder created individual digital stories, and participated in two interviews. Thematic analysis was informed by a critical social science approach. The results highlight that bullying, challenges in community programs, and the prioritization of therapeutic interventions limited participation. Participation was maximized when physical activity generated meaning, purpose, a sense of identity, and affective pleasures. The study findings illuminate the complexity of physical activity participation which has not previously been described in the literature. The findings suggest potential value in promoting the affective pleasures of movement, along with facilitating social and systemic pathways to enhance physical activity participation. Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are less likely to be physically active compared to their age-related peers. Despite the lower levels of physical activity observed among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, it is unknown why they are predominantly inactive. Much of the research so far has focused on understanding how biological aspects influence physical activity participation. But there is little research that has examined how social and cultural components influence their physical activity participation. There is also little research that has sought the perspectives and experiences of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. In this study, 10 adolescent boys with autism spectrum disorder created a digital story, and also participated in two face-to-face interviews. The purpose of the study was to examine how individual, social, and cultural forces influenced physical activity participation. Analysis of the data highlight that bullying, challenges in community programs, and the prioritization of therapeutic interventions limited participation. On the contrary, participants were more likely to be active when physical activity generated meaning, purpose, a sense of identity, and affective pleasures. The findings add new knowledge suggesting that adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are not simply unmotivated. Rather, physical activity participation was shaped by wider social experiences, norms, values, and practices in which they were immersed. The findings suggest a need for directed efforts to create policies and practices which are individualized and reflective of the needs and abilities of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to promote physical activity participation and potentially enhance physical health and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In the knowledge base examining experiences of childhood brain injury, the perspectives of children with brain injury are notably lacking. This failure to represent the voices of pediatric clients has resulted in an incomplete knowledge base from which to inform evidence-based rehabilitation practice. In this paper, we examine why the perspectives of children with brain injury are rarely sought and propose a new way forward. Methods: We draw upon current evidence and practices in related fields and present an exemplar from an in-progress qualitative arts-based research project with children with brain injury. Results: Assumptions ingrained in research practices, particularly those surrounding the capacity of 'doubly vulnerable' children with brain injury to produce knowledge, have resulted in the relative exclusion of this group from research that concerns them. For the field to evolve, research practices must value children's first-hand accounts, engage them in co-constructing knowledge about their lives, and invite methods that meet their interests and abilities. Conclusion: By reframing how we think about the capacities of children with disabilities and shifting our research practices to include children with brain injury as knowledgeable participants, it becomes possible to expand the knowledge base upon which clinical rehabilitation practices are built. Current research practices preclude 'doubly vulnerable' pediatric populations, including children with brain injury, from actively contributing to research that concerns them. As a result, the perspectives of children with brain injury are virtually absent from research, rendering the evidence base upon which rehabilitative practices are built incomplete. Reframing how we think about the capacities of children with brain injury can shift how we engage with them, both in research and clinic, and may subsequently impact the knowledge available to us. Implications for client-centred rehabilitation are discussed, including the need to understand children as capable of insight into their own experience, as able to contribute to a more complete understanding of the health phenomena that affect them, and as invaluable and active participants in research and clinical care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much qualitative research produces little new knowledge. We argue that this is largely due to deficits of analysis. Researchers too seldom venture beyond cataloguing data into pre-existing concepts and scouting for "themes," and fail to exploit the distinctive powers of insight of qualitative methodology. The paper introduces a "value-adding" approach to qualitative analysis that aims to extend and enrich researchers' analytic interpretive practices and enhance the worth of the knowledge generated. We outline key features of this form of analysis, including how it is constituted by principles of interpretation, contextualization, criticality, and the "creative presence" of the researcher. Using concrete examples from our own research, we describe some analytic "devices" that can free up and stretch a researcher's analytic capacities, including putting reflexivity to work, treating everything as data, reading data for what is invisible, anomalous and "gestalt," engaging in "generative" coding, deploying heuristics for theorizing, and recognizing writing as a key analytic activity. We argue that at its core, value-adding analysis is a scientific craft rather than a scientific formula, a creative assemblage of reality rather than a procedural determination of it. The researcher is the primary generative and synthesizing mechanism for transforming empirically observed data into the key products of qualitative research—concepts, accounts and explanations. The ultimate value of value-adding analysis resides in its ability to generate new knowledge, including not just the "discovery" of things heretofore unknown but also the re-conceptualization of what is already known, and, importantly, the reframing and reconstitution of the research problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hiring and promotion of qualitative researchers in the health sciences, in Canada and internationally, is impacted by the prestige of quantification as the ultimate measure of scientific quality in current academic and health-care settings. This is further exacerbated by neoliberal notions of productivity, which offer very limited forms of assessment for different ways of producing knowledge or doing science differently. While qualitative researchers share the effects of the politics of productivity and corporate university policies with other academics, we argue that they are disadvantaged by the combination of the latent biomedical conservatism that characterizes the health sciences in Canada with the lack of frameworks to acknowledge and properly assess alternative forms of interdisciplinary scholarship. In our experience, it is challenging for qualitative researchers to advance in Canadian health sciences faculties. In light of this, we propose a framework for evaluating their scholarly work. We have structured this article in three sections: (a) to characterize the academic landscape in which qualitative health scholars find themselves when housed in Canadian faculties of medicine and their schools of health sciences, (b) to report on an organizational scan we undertook in order to understand current practices of evaluating scholarly productivity at these institutions, and (c) to propose a set of criteria that could more appropriately evaluate the contributions made by qualitative researchers working in the health sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To explore the experiences of young people with physical disabilities relating to social inclusion and physical activity, in order to describe the characteristics of social environments that support participation in physical activity.Method: An iterative, qualitative design employed in-depth, semi-structured interviews with young people with physical disabilities aged 12–18 (n= 11). Data were analyzed using interpretive thematic analysis.Results: Young people described several ways that their social environments help motivate and support them in their physical activity participation. These include providing: fair and equitable participation beyond physical accommodations; belonging through teamwork; and socially supported independence.Conclusions: Supportive social environments characterized by equitable participation, a sense of belonging, and opportunities for interdependence, play a critical role in promoting the health and well-being of young people with physical disabilities. These characteristics are important to consider in the design of both integrated and dedicated physical activity programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary data are rarely used explicitly as a source of data outside of the original research purpose for which they were collected. As a result, qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) has been described as an "invisible enterprise" for which there is a "notable silence" amongst the qualitative research community. In this paper, we report on the methodological implications of conducting a secondary analysis of qualitative data focusing on parents' narratives of help-seeking activities in the prodrome to psychosis. We review the literature on QSA, highlighting the main characteristics of the approach, and discuss issues and challenges encountered in conducting a secondary analysis. We conclude with some thoughts on the implications for conducting a QSA in children's mental health services and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION: Improvements in pediatric cancer survival have increased interest in the experiences of children undergoing treatment; however, no review of the qualitative literature describing these experiences has been conducted. LITERATURE SEARCH: Databases were searched from January 2000 to January 2016 for qualitative studies describing the experience of children with cancer aged 18 years or younger. DATA EVALUATION: Two reviewers assessed abstracts for relevance and rated reporting comprehensiveness. Participant quotations and descriptions of participants' comments and behaviors were coded. Coded data were pooled to provide a thematic synthesis. SYNTHESIS: 51 studies were included. Five themes were identified: suffering because of cancer, fluctuating realities, coping strategies, new roles and responsibilities of the child, and practical resources to enable managing cancer. Children articulated physical, emotional, and social challenges and made suggestions to improve their quality of life during therapy. IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH: Results provide data related to the experience of children with cancer that can inform practice changes and research activities aimed at enhancing quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]