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Outpatients' And Treatment Providers’ Cultural Model(S) Of Mental Illness In Northern Illinois, Emily Jean Stephen

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

For this thesis, I interviewed outpatients and clinicians from mental health treatment providers from the DeKalb, Illinois area to investigate the cultural models of mental illness held by both groups. I employed ethnographic methods of semi-structured interviews, and with cognitive tasks (free-listing, and pile sorting) to research similarities and differences between the outpatients’ and mental health treatment providers’ cultural models of ‘mental illness.’ Both mental health clinicians and outpatients have experience with disorders commonly termed ‘mental illness.’ I found differences of experience and identity seemed to more strongly influence one’s cultural model of mental illness than one’s level or type …