Participation under coercion. On young people’s experiences in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient care.  The aim of the dissertation is to study young people’s experiences of participation under coercion in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient care and to discuss these in relationship to the potential senses of participation and the conditions applying to encounters in care. It takes as its theoretical point of departure Gadamer’s texts on medical encounters, von Wright’s texts on participation as an intersubjective phenomenon that is related to the creation of meaning and Buber’s texts on interhuman encounters. The dissertation is based on two empirical studies. The first consisted of interviews with 21 young people in the 14-18 age group who were patients in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient care; ten of them involuntarily, eleven voluntarily admitted. The interviews dealt with the following areas: coercion, participation, meaning and encounters in care. The second study involved an analysis of the ambitions of the health care system with regard to participation and encounters with patients as expressed in the legal regulations applying to the health and medical services and the guidelines on professional ethics for different categories of staff. Analysis of the empirical material was based on a hermeneutic approach. The young people’s experiences of their care revealed that they rarely have any knowledge of the legal conditions that apply or about their rights, irrespective of whether they are voluntary or committed patients. One recurrent experience is lack of clarity about the reason for the treatment and what it is intended to do. Despite these shortcomings in their participation, some of the young people view their treatment as important and at times even lifesaving. Analysis of the ambitions of the health care system shows that the focus in the current regulations is placed on the self-determination and autonomy of the patients. There is rarely any description of the importance of a dialogue or of collaboration with the patient. Analysis of the material as a whole reveals that three senses can be attributed to participation in the care situation studied: participation as a right, participation as involvement and participation as meaning. The dissertation discusses how participation in these three senses can find expression in encounters between young people and staff. If participation is to be possible, a relation and an interhuman encounter is required which is characterised by truth, frankness and lack of pretence. This shows how important it is for young people undergoing coercive treatment to be able to meet individuals who can see and acknowledge them as subjects with an entitlement to participate. This can offer possibilities for the creation of meaning in treatment that has not always been sought but which can still be experienced as meaningful.

Muzika, jungianti materialų pasaulį su žmogaus siela, gali skatinti maldos nuotaiką ir padėti dalyvauti krikščioniškoje liturgijoje. Pastaruoju atveju ji gali būti vadinama liturgine muzika. Liturginė muzika nereiškia muzikinio stiliaus, o daugiau (tinkamą liturgijai) formą. Tačiau forma gali daryti įtaką turiniui. Tarp jaunimo labiausiai paplitusi krikščioniška folk muzika, suprastina kaip naujasis liaudiškasis giedojimas, užpildo posovietinės Lietuvos bažnytinės muzikos paveldo spragas. Šio stiliaus giesmių bei „šlovinimo grupės“ termino tarp šv. Mišiose giedančio jaunimo atsiradimas liudija tam tikrą slinktį, galinčią reikšti tiek naujų tikėjimo išraiškos formų ieškojimą, tiek ir nesusimąstymą apie šv. Mišių slėpiniui deramą muzikinį repertuarą bei naudojimą žanrų, neatsižvelgiančių į liturgijos prasmę, apeigų dalis, liturginius metus. Tinkamos liturginės jaunimo katechezės užduotis – atliepti į šiuos iššūkius. Apibendrinant atlikto Kauno I dekanato jaunimo liturginės muzikos grupių katechezės būklės tyrimo rezultatus, teigiamu reiškiniu galima laikyti, kad Kauno bažnyčiose giedantis jaunimas atskiria Mišias nuo kitų momentų, kad giedojimą jose patiria kaip maldos momentą, tuo pačiu kartais jausdami poreikį ir nutilti, nurimti. Jiems svarbūs giesmių žodžiai ir jų atitikimas šv. Mišių dalims. Taip pat jiems svarbus ir kitų liturginės asamblėjos narių įsijungimas į giedojimą bei įvertinimas. Vilties teikia jaunimo mėgstamas gyvas muzikavimas bei jaučiamas gimtosios kalbos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Music, which joins material world with human soul, evokes prayer in the heart and helps to participate in Christian liturgy. Thus, such music can be called liturgical music. Liturgical music does not mean a particular musical style, but rather a form of music suitable for liturgy - a form that can influence the content. Christian folk music, which is most popular with young people, should be understood as new folk singing which fills the gaps in post-Soviet Lithuanian Church music. The rise of this style of songs as well as coinage of the term “a worship group“, characterizing a group of young people singing during the Holy Mass, evidence a certain shift that can be described as a quest of new forms to express faith. However, it can also denote unreflecting about an appropriate musical repertoire suitable for the Mystery of the Holy Mass and using genres which make no reckoning of the meaning of the liturgy, the parts of the rite and the liturgical year. This is why there is an urge of an appropriate liturgical catechesis of young people. The results of the Survey on the Status of the Youth Groups of Liturgical Music in Kaunas 1st Deanery maintain that the young people who are singing in the churches of Kaunas dissociate Holy Mass from other moments as they consider their chant to be a moment of prayer at the same time sometimes feeling some need to be silent and quiet. They pay attention to the words of the hymns and their correspondence to the parts of the Holy Mass. It... [to full text]

This thesis focuses on Kaiapoi, a small town in North Canterbury, and studies the ways young people are discursively constructed by adults and each other, and also the different ways young people experience and use the town's environment. Drawing on key informant interviews, media analysis, a youth survey and a photography activity (photovoice); the research developed a rich understanding of the different ways young people are constructed in Kaiapoi and the places young people enjoy and do not enjoy going to in the town and why.

This dissertation examines the mental health presentations of clinic-referred children in state ordered out-of-home care and compares these to the presentations of clinic-referred children from the general population. The results of this study will inform the design of a more comprehensive research project assessing the differences between the psychopathology of clinic-referred children in out-of-home care and children from the general population. The overall goal is for researchers and clinicians to be able to better understand the underlying determinisms of the psychopathology of children in out-of-home care. Three samples were used for the between-group comparisons. The Children in Care Study (CICS) sample consists of 213 clinic-referred children in out-of-home care between the ages of four and eleven years. Firstly, this group was compared to 800 clinic-referred children, between six and eleven years, from the general population. For this analysis, the CICS sample was adjusted to match this group’s age range. Secondly, the entire CICS sample was compared to 1201 clinic-referred children, between the ages of four and eleven, from the general population. Mental health presentations were measured using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL). A within-subject comparison was conducted comparing the CICS sample’s CBCL DSM-oriented scores to the children’s caregiver-reported diagnosis. Results indicated that clinic-referred children in care presented with significantly fewer internalising symptoms than clinic-referred children from the general population. Clinic-referred children in care displayed greater correlations among their CBCL subscale scores than other clinic-referred children, which may suggest greater symptom complexity. Additionally, there appeared to be poor concordance between caregiver-reported psychiatric diagnoses and CBCL DSM-oriented scores for clinic-referred children in out-of-home care. Overall, the mental health presentations measured by the CBCL indicated that the differences between the two populations were relatively small in terms of their severity. However, clinic-referred children in care presented with less severe internalising problems than other clinic-referred children. Further research is needed to explore the issues underlying diagnostic dis-concordance and the complexity of the mental health presentations of children in state ordered care.

I den här avhandlingsstudien undersöks nöjdheten med tillvaron i vårt konsumtionssamhälle bland konsumenter i olika åldrar. De tre områden som för unga konsumenter (9–19 år) som grupp hade starkast samband med den övergripande nöjdheten: (1) att vara nöjd med sig själv, (2) sina kläder, samt (3) vikt och hälsa, studeras sedan närmare. Fokus ligger på nöjdhetens samspel med olika aspekter på konsumtion, där olika förhållningssätt kan tänkas vara kännetecknande för mer eller mindre nöjda konsumenter. De undersökta aspekterna är materiella värderingar, inställning till reklam, mottaglighet för social påverkan inför köp, kommunikation om konsumtion i familjen, konsumtion av onyttiga livsmedel, läsvanor och TV-vanor. Till underlag för undersökningen ligger en enkätstudie med totalt 816 respondenter, samt en intervjustudie med totalt 200 deltagare. Urvalet, som består av skolungdomar mellan 9 och 19 år samt en mindre grupp av deras föräldrar, bor alla i Degerfors kommun i östra Värmland. Huvudresultaten är att de flesta är ganska eller mycket nöjda med merparten av undersökta områden. Dock finns intressanta skillnader mellan olika åldersgrupper och kön. De kvantitativa resultaten kompletteras med en mängd intressanta och insiktsfulla utsagor från studiens deltagare när det gäller de flesta undersökta områden. Sammantaget kan resultaten tolkas enligt en modell som går ut på att vi blir nöjda med våra konsumtionsval så länge de bidrar till att uppfylla våra mål, vilket i de flesta fall sker genom att vi genom kunskapsutvecklande eller symbolisk konsumtion får större inflytande i relevanta referensgrupper.

Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to study mental distress, health and lifestyle habits, social factors and psychotropic drug use by young people, and how PHNs conceive their roles in relation to this. Methods: Quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Study I included data  from the Norwegian Youth Health Study (NYHS, 11 620 participants, aged 15-16 years) (2000–2003) linked to the Norwegian Prescription Database (NorPD) (2004–2009). Study II included prescription data on psychotropic drugs among 15-16 year olds from the NorPD (2006–2010). Eight young people were interviewed and qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data (III). Study IV included interviews with 20 Public Health Nurses (PHN), and was analysed using a phenomenographic approach. Main results: Mental distress was reported among 15.5% of the adolescents non-users of psychotropic drugs, 75% of whom were girls. In both genders reporting mental distress, incident psychotropic use was higher one to nine years, up to 27.7% among girls, as compared with the rest of the participants. In addition, health, lifestyle habits and social factors were associated with incident use (I). Psychotropic drug use increased during 2006–2010, hypnotics and melatonin accounted for most of the increase. In total, 16.4% of all incident psychotropic drug users in 2007 were still having prescriptions dispensed in 2010 (II). Young people experience both beneficial and undesired effects from psychotropic drugs. Access to professional support and follow-up was experienced as insufficient. Life with family, friends, school and work was influenced by psychotropic drug use, and they were afraid of being lonely and stigmatized (III). The PHNs conceived their roles in relation to young people as; the discovering PHNs who became aware of psychotropic drug use in the health dialogues and chose either to act or not to act in relation to this. Those PHNs who took action continued to be the cooperating PHNs who cooperated with the young people, their families, schools, and others. If cooperation was established, the supporting PHNs teach and support the young people in relation to psychotropic drug use (IV). Conclusions: Attention must be paid to poor mental health and increasing psychotropic drug use by young people. Advances in knowledge, treatment and follow-up are needed. The prevalence of mental distress among young people, with differences between the genders, as well as between socioeconomic groups, should have consequences for health promotion strategies. PHNs in Norway, working in health centres and schools, have responsibility and opportunity to identify and follow-up young people with mental health problems. / Baksidestext International studies indicate an increase in mental distress and psychotropic drug use among young people. In this thesis mental distress is reported among 15.5 % of the young people. Of those reporting mental distress 75 % were girls. One quarter of the girls reporting mental distress at 15-16 years of age was incident users of psychotropic drugs one to nine years later. Psychotropic drug use, increase among young people, particularly hypnotic drugs. The young people experience beneficial and undesired effects of the psychotropic drugs. They miss out on professional availability and follow-up, and experience negative reactions related to their psychotropic drug use by their significant others. The public health nurse who discovers psychotropic drug use among young people chooses either to act or not to act in relation to this. Those who choose to act continue to cooperate with the young people and others. An established cooperation was followed by a public health nurse who supports and teaches the young people. The prevalence of mental distress, with a high frequency of initiation of psychotropic drug use among young people should have consequences for health promotion in the school health service. Public health nurses, working in health centers and schools, have a responsibility to promote health and prevent health problems. They have the responsibility and opportunity to identify young people struggling with mental health problems and psychotropic drug use as well as teach and support significant others.

This study is in two parts, separate and distinctive, yet interconnected. It is concerned with black young people, bom in Croydon, whose parents and grandparents were born in the Caribbean or who were socialised as Caribbeans. It seeks to generate a theory of how being black and bom in Britain creates intergenerational tensions which transcend those of "normal" adolescent relationships and how this affects their membership of 'main-stream' society. Part A, is an Institution Focused Study which examines the efficacy of the grounded theory approach as a suitable methodology for an ethnographic study of British-born black young people, necessitating in-depth interviewing both of the young people themselves and adults of their parents' and grandparents' generations. The Institution Focused Study explains the background to the research including the interest of the researcher in this topic. It charts the conditions which black young people face in a white-dominated and inherently racist society and highlights the paucity of research on this issue. It examines the grounded theory approach, suggesting that its suitability arises from its similarity to the youth work practitioner's style of operation and devises an appropriate research design to ensure that sufficient subjects are recruited and interviewed to provide information-rich data to be collected and analysed. It concludes that this method, when applied with scientific rigour, will produce sufficient data to enable both substantive theories and a more formal theory of British-born black young people to be generated. Part B constitutes the main study. After a brief introduction a discussion on Adolescence is provided to contextualise the study in view of the varying and rapid changes occurring in this period of human development. The study returns to the question of the research design and considers how information-rich data is to be gathered, and how subjects will be recruited and interviewed for which It provides an interviewer prompt sheet. An analysis of the data is then offered, grouped into the categories which have emerged and been developed as the study unfurled. Discussion then centres around the subjects 'own stories' together with other theories and research. The findings are summarised leading to a number of substantive theories which then are synthesised into a formal theory of British-born black young people. This suggests that they suffer a sense of cultural anomie denying them a necessary, new and distinctive identity as emerging black British citizens. The study raises the implications of this for the future work of the Croydon Youth Development Trust before offering a foot-note on methodology; a reflection on the grounded theory approach and its suitability to this type of ethnographic research.

Participation under coercion. On young people’s experiences in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient care.  The aim of the dissertation is to study young people’s experiences of participation under coercion in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient care and to discuss these in relationship to the potential senses of participation and the conditions applying to encounters in care. It takes as its theoretical point of departure Gadamer’s texts on medical encounters, von Wright’s texts on participation as an intersubjective phenomenon that is related to the creation of meaning and Buber’s texts on interhuman encounters. The dissertation is based on two empirical studies. The first consisted of interviews with 21 young people in the 14-18 age group who were patients in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient care; ten of them involuntarily, eleven voluntarily admitted. The interviews dealt with the following areas: coercion, participation, meaning and encounters in care. The second study involved an analysis of the ambitions of the health care system with regard to participation and encounters with patients as expressed in the legal regulations applying to the health and medical services and the guidelines on professional ethics for different categories of staff. Analysis of the empirical material was based on a hermeneutic approach. The young people’s experiences of their care revealed that they rarely have any knowledge of the legal conditions that apply or about their rights, irrespective of whether they are voluntary or committed patients. One recurrent experience is lack of clarity about the reason for the treatment and what it is intended to do. Despite these shortcomings in their participation, some of the young people view their treatment as important and at times even lifesaving. Analysis of the ambitions of the health care system shows that the focus in the current regulations is placed on the self-determination and autonomy of the patients. There is rarely any description of the importance of a dialogue or of collaboration with the patient. Analysis of the material as a whole reveals that three senses can be attributed to participation in the care situation studied: participation as a right, participation as involvement and participation as meaning. The dissertation discusses how participation in these three senses can find expression in encounters between young people and staff. If participation is to be possible, a relation and an interhuman encounter is required which is characterised by truth, frankness and lack of pretence. This shows how important it is for young people undergoing coercive treatment to be able to meet individuals who can see and acknowledge them as subjects with an entitlement to participate. This can offer possibilities for the creation of meaning in treatment that has not always been sought but which can still be experienced as meaningful.

Young people in South Africa, particularly females, are at great risk of acquiring HIV, and heterosexual sex is the predominant mode of HIV transmission. In order to curb the epidemic the Department of Health encourages all sectors in the society, including religious institutions, to respond effectively. The present thesis seeks to increase the understanding of the role of Christian communities in prevention of HIV for young people. Three denominations in KwaZulu-Natal were selected to reflect the diversity of Christian churches in South Africa: the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa, and the Assemblies of God. Using qualitative interviews the first paper explores how religious leaders (n=16) deal with the conflict between the values of the church and young people’s sexuality. Study II reports on attitudes to HIV prevention for young people among religious leaders (n=215) using questionnaire survey data. Study III investigates how young people (n=62) reflect on messages received from their churches regarding premarital sex by analysing nine focus group discussions. In the fourth paper, based on questionnaire survey data, we report on young people’s (n=811) experiences of relationships with the opposite sex and their perceived risk of HIV infection. The view that young people in churches are sexually active before marriage was common among religious leadership. The majority of religious leaders also reported that they are responsible for educating young people about HIV prevention. Religious leaders who had received training on HIV were more likely to run a life skills programme for young people, however they were ambivalent about prevention messages. Young people reported premarital sexual abstinence as the main HIV prevention message from their churches. The majority responded that they had received information about HIV in church. To be in a relationship was common, more so for males for whom multiple relationships also were viewed more acceptable. To perceive themselves at risk of HIV infection was common. Further training for religious leaders is needed to enable them to manage the conflict between the doctrine of the church and their willingness to assist young people in the transition into adulthood. / Faculty of Medicine

This thesis investigates the representation, positioning, and valuing of young people and youth-specific performance in the field of cultural production in Australia in the 1990s. Using specific case-studies, this thesis argues that young people and youth-specific performance are being represented, positioned, and valued in a variety of contradictory ways as a result of a number of significant contemporary factors: namely, a prevalence of 'new generation' discourse and an attendant generationalism, a growing critical recognition of young people's 'grounded aesthetics', and existing anxieties surrounding the economic future of Australia's arts industry. This is an unstable situation for youth-specific performance, contrasting from earlier periods in Australia's theatre history when young people were positioned principally in terms of their need for 'development' (education and training) or their potential contribution to ongoing 'progression'. This thesis considers this contemporary situation in relation to issues of access and power for young people in the changed social and cultural conditions of the 1990s. The introductory chapter provides a critical background to the main issues presented in the thesis: the concepts of 'youth' and 'culture', the social and cultural characteristics of young people's lives in the 1990s, the rise of generationalist discourse, and the anxious state of the Australian arts industry. The 'institutional' site of state theatre is then taken as a beginning case study to examine the positioning of young people and youth-specific programs in 'official' cultural environments. It argues that anxious plans for the future survival of state 'flagship' companies are positioning young people and youth-specific programs in predominantly generationalist ways, using 'new generation' discourse to mask often conservative approaches. Chapter One begins with a history of Magpie Theatre (a former youth-specific company attached to the State Theatre Company of South Australia) which reflects some of the major priorities of youth-specific theatre of the last twenty years. By way of contrast, the Sydney Theatre Company's recent attempts to reposition young people and youth-specific work in the 1990s are discussed in Chapter Two. This chapter shows how the company's developmental aims and processing of new work are achieved in 'new generation' programs that strictly control young people's contribution to the company's future. Both chapters help to demonstrate the main conceptual shift in youth-specific theatre in the 1990s from 'developmentalism' to 'difference' (with reference to the concomitant growth of drama-in-education in schools), while at the same time alluding to its varying effect. Chapter Three argues that festivals, as volatile sites of cultural production, magnify the wider cultural field's 'stake of struggles': particularly, the struggles to equitably value young people's diverse contributions to developments in the cultural field, both as cultural 'innovators' and cultural 'preservers'. Centred on an interrelated critique of access, this chapter discusses the various motives and priorities of three recent youth-specific arts festivals in terms of their representation and valuing of young people and their work: the Take Over 97 National Festival for Young People, the Stage X Event, and the Loud National Media Festival of Youth Culture and the Arts. Chapter Four considers a site primarily and explicitly concerned with issues of access, representation, and value. This chapter examines in detail the 'self-narratives' of two youth-specific community-based performances, whereby young people's access to 'grounded' modes of cultural expression resulted in innovative cultural performance and signalled a regenerated social politics of community theatre. The chapter examines how Skate Girl Space by the Hereford Sisters and Zen Che by the Ningi Connection utilised young people's 'grounded aesthetics' of video performance to address young people's necessary negotiation with risk and individualisation in the late 1990s. Both projects counteracted public generationalist discourses, and challenged and reinscribed the conventions of gender performance and 'youth'. The final chapter considers the positioning of young people and youth-specific arts in Australian cultural policy, arguing that youth-specific cultural production rarely fits into the characteristic modes of arts production valorised by statistical frameworks for arts industry evaluation. The chapter calls for more open approaches whereby practice might inform policy which recognises the interconnected social, cultural and economic regimes of value that youth-specific work engages in. This thesis draws from theatre and performance studies, sociology, youth studies, cultural studies, and cultural policy studies.