<p><font face="Times New Roman">This study explored the lived experience of spouses living with depressed partners. A qualitative phenomenological,&nbsp / exploratory study design was used to explore the lived experience of the spouses, identifying the coping strategies and challenges that they face as they live with the depressed partners. A purposive sample of seven spouses living with their depressed partners who were being treated in outpatient department were recruited to participate in the study.</font></p> <p align="left">In-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted, audiotaped with the participants&rsquo / permission and transcribed verbatim. The data from the transcripts, field notes, and demographic questionnaires was organized ready for analysis. Thematic data analysis was used to code the data, and group the codes to form categories. The categories were further regrouped to form themes. The themes were conceptualized and contextualized to uncover the meaning that the spouse carers attached to the lived experience.</p> <p align="left">It emerged that most of the spouses described their partners and the relationship negatively due to the burden of care. The male carers as compared to the female carers expressed the negativity more and it impacted on the quality of care they were providing to the depressed partners. It was revealed that inadequate professional support was linked with the ineffective coping strategies employed by the spouse carers. Hence, most of the spouse carers presented with symptoms of depression and were at the stage of impoverishment according to the adaptive potential assessment model. A recommendation to involve spouse carers in the treatment plan and improve the support system to the spouse carers was made to the stakeholders of health service providers at the primary health level.</p>

The use of positron-emitting tracers has been extended beyond tomographic facilities in the last few years, giving rise to a general positron-emitting tracing technique. The methodological part of the present thesis involved the evaluation of the performance of storage phosphor (SP) plates, with tracers labeled with high-energy, short-lived, positron-emitting radionuclides, using homogenized tissue specimens and autoradiography with frozen brain sections. The SP plates showed superior sensitivity and a linear response over a wide radioactivity range. Autoradioradiography provided reliable results due to (a) adequate sensitivity for low radioactivity concentration, b) an excellent linear range, and (c) satisfactory resolution. Though equilibration time of receptor-ligand interaction was dependent upon section thickness, quantification was possib with thinner sections. An initial finding using frozen section autoradiography of rat brain and spinal cord showed preferential binding of [11C]4-NMPB, a muscarinic acetylcholine (mACh) receptor antagonist, to the M4 subtype of mACh receptors. Further work to ascertain this specificity, by use of binding studies on cell membranes from CHO-K1 cells expressing individual subtypes of human mACh receptors, suggested lack of subtype selectivity. With respect to the possible cliinical use in glutamatergic neuropathology, [11C]cyano-dizocilpine, as a potential PET tracer for the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) subtype of glutamate receptors, was studied. The in vivo visualization of specific binding could not be achieved, though in vitro binding demonstrated good specificity and preferential binding to the activated for of the NMDA receptors. The use of the glucose analogue [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) to study glucose utilization was evaluated in experimental traumatic brain injury (TBI). A trauma-induced increased uptake of FDG was seen, whereas the uptake of [1-14C]glucose remained unchanged. This discrepancy might be due to the increased postraumatic affinity of FDG for the endothelial glucose transporter proteins and/or to the hexokinase enzyme. [11C]Cyano-dizocilpine, [11C]4-NMPB, and [11C]flumazenil were utilized in autoradiography to evaluate changes in NMDA, mACh, and GABAA receptors, espectively, in experimental TBI. Observations showed a global decrease in the binding potential BP) of (i) [11C]cyano-dizocilpine acutely and 12 hrs after TBI, and (ii) of [11C]4-NMPB at 12 hrs after TBI, and (iii) a decrease in the BP of [11C]flumazenil in the cortex and hippocampus ipsilateral to the site of injury. The demonstrated changes in receptor binding after TBI are indicative of a widely dissipated effect of TBI on the particular neurotransmitter receptor systems as compared with what would be expected from FDG studies after TBI, i.e., a local disturbed neurotransmission.

Rehabilitation after brain injury is often a process which is spread over several years and runs through different phases. After sub acute in-patient rehabilitation a community based post-acute rehabilitation can follow. In this late phase after injury the rehabilitation focuses on reintegration into the community through a return to work and participation in other occupations in society. The overall aim of this dissertation was to study the long-term outcome of brain injury, with a special emphasis on the return to everyday domestic and productive occupations and the connection these have to life satisfaction as a whole. The aim was also to describe and understand the lived experience of the consequences of brain injury in these areas. This dissertation comprises four studies on different aspects of the long-term outcome of those who have had a brain injury. In a sample of 56 people, the value of occupational therapy assessments as predictors of an eventual return to work was investigated. In a longitudinal follow-up study, the life satisfaction of the participants (n 36) was reported and its correlation to a return to work was evaluated. Interviews were conducted (n 10) to explore the main characteristics of the meaning of work after brain injury in ten respondents. And, finally, in the fourth study, 157 people reported their participation in community activities. The extent of the correspondence between the level of participation and life satisfaction was calculated. The findings showed that occupational therapy assessments were useful in predicting a return to work in the late phase of the recovery after brain injury. A combination of assessments on the level of body function with assessments on activity level appeared to comprise the best predictive model. In two different studies the reported life satisfaction was found to be significantly lower than the level of life satisfaction in a sample of healthy Swedes for almost all domains. When comparing life satisfaction at two points in time with an interval of three years between them in the longitudinal study, no significant improvement was found. There was no difference reported by the participants for their overall life satisfaction regardless of whether they were back at work or in education, or not. On the other hand, participation in daily occupations in a wider perspective was found to have a positive impact on satisfaction with life as a whole. However, half or more than half of the participants claimed that their participation was restricted except for the items self-care and mobility, where a higher degree of participation was reported. The meaning of work after the brain injury had changed: Work had taken on a new place in life and the importance of work had decreased. In contrast, the social dimension of work had expanded in importance. After the brain injury, the perception of the participants’ own competence and work identity had changed and the respondents described their striving to return to normality. To conclude, brain injury has a lasting effect on a person’s life, even many years after the injury; consequently there is need for rehabilitation in this late phase. Life satisfaction, which is often used as an overriding goal for rehabilitation, did not improve over time. This finding raises the question of whether life satisfaction is too broad a concept and/or insufficiently sensitive to improvements. There is need for further research in this area to clarify the factors that have an impact on life satisfaction.

The aim of this thesis is to explore and analyse lived experience of social categorisations such as intellectual disability, gender and age. The following overarching questions will direct the focus of the thesis, on how 13 middle-aged (aged 38-60 years) women and men who receive disability services according to the Act (1993:387) concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS), describe their everyday life practices: - In what way(s) are the social categorisations disability, gender, and age expressed in the interviews? How do the participants relate their lived experience of the social categorisation in relation to arenas such as work, family, and leisure time? How can this lived experience be understood in relation to the structures and conditions that form the institutions within the disability services? With a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, the thesis is based on repeated audio- and video-recorded qualitative semi-structured interviews and field visits. The altogether 16 participants were divided into two groups: the main group consisted of 13 adults and a reference group, which consisted of 3 younger informants (aged 25-29 years). Despite political ambitions that state that people with disabilities should have opportunity to live like others, this thesis shows that their everyday life is, in fact, conditioned by institutional structures. The structures that conditions the disability services together with the social construction of disability, but also of age and gender, frames leisure time, social networks, family life, practicing partnership, mobility (especially for women), and working life – in short, these conditions their abilities to fulfil the expectations that are imbedded throughout the social construction of adulthood. The relationship with the labour force can be seen as an illustrative example: The ability to be part of a regular working force was central for the interviewees. However, the analysis showed that the work that was available for the participants, is a welfare state effort, that is situated in an intersection where a logic of care meets a logic derived from the open labour market, thereby creating a situation filled with contradictions. On the one hand, the informants felt an obligation to fulfil an almost Protestant work ethic. One the other hand, their work efforts are not acknowledged by society as work. On the one hand, daily activity is a voluntary right, on the other hand; the informants have little opportunity to relinquish this right, depending on the particular organisation of the disability services. The participants also expressed concerns about losing this work, a worry that can be seen as paradoxical in respect of their legislative right to daily activity.  The analysis has highlighted how the participants, in many situations, suffer a disadvantageous position with regard to hermeneutical resources to make sense of their experience. They also face structural obstacles to fully live an adult life. This could be described as experiencing societal norms of what one is expected to live up to, but at the same time be deprived of real opportunities to fulfil these requests – thereby, to live a contradiction. Lived experience of intellectual disability, gender and age, can therefore be considered as being a lived experience of a conditional adulthood.

The racialized realities faced by Black students provide an impetus to examine the controversy over Canada's first Africentric Alternative School, approved on January 29, 2008 by the Toronto District School Board. Newspaper articles, editorials and letters to the editor, as well as speeches by delegations and trustees, provide a rich snapshot of the arguments put forth in the heated political debate. Through the lens of equity and critical race theory, the diverse and divergent stances taken by both proponents and opponents of the school are analysed and understood. A conceptual framework of hidden and public transcripts (Scott, 1990) is used to distinguish arguments that reflect on the lived experiences of Black students from those that reiterate the dominant discourses of liberal democratic societies. The findings emerge as three opposing sets of themes that reveal a transcript reflective of the ongoing salience of racism within ostensibly liberal claims to racial equality.

The racialized realities faced by Black students provide an impetus to examine the controversy over Canada's first Africentric Alternative School, approved on January 29, 2008 by the Toronto District School Board. Newspaper articles, editorials and letters to the editor, as well as speeches by delegations and trustees, provide a rich snapshot of the arguments put forth in the heated political debate. Through the lens of equity and critical race theory, the diverse and divergent stances taken by both proponents and opponents of the school are analysed and understood. A conceptual framework of hidden and public transcripts (Scott, 1990) is used to distinguish arguments that reflect on the lived experiences of Black students from those that reiterate the dominant discourses of liberal democratic societies. The findings emerge as three opposing sets of themes that reveal a transcript reflective of the ongoing salience of racism within ostensibly liberal claims to racial equality.

This thesis is a narrative inquiry into the experiences of two childrens lives in school. I lived alongside the two children in their grade five classroom for eight months of their school year inquiring into the ways that their school experiences and their relationships with the teacher, classmates, and subject matter influenced the way they composed their stories to live by. In this thesis I share a personal reflection on the way my story to live by has been shaped by my experiences, specifically as a student, a teacher, and a researcher. I use field notes and taped conversations with each of the two boys to retell the stories they shared with me and apply them to literature and theory. I use Deweys Criteria of Experience within a narrative framework to help understand and retell the stories of the two boys as well as Clandinin, Pushor, and Murray Orrs commonplaces of narrative inquiry: place, temporality, and sociality. I explore Aokis planned and lived curriculum and Noddings ethic of care and fidelity in teaching as they applied to the inquiry.

A reflective essay to accompany the thesis exhibition, the Wanderer, installed in the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, 2013. An exploration of the questions and concepts informing the process of developing and refining the visual vocabulary of my practice. Images of women, topographical maps, floral imagery and astronomical maps provide the vocabulary of the language and syntax that I am developing to enunciate the interrelationships between the construction of self and lived experience, with concepts of identity, body and gesture, history and place.

In Pure Lust, Mary Daly claims that the Virgin Mary is an “image of total subservience, the dethroned and sapped Goddess who was converted into a vessel.” Daly perceives Mary primarily through Christian scripture and other orthodox texts, ignoring her role as part of a religion lived and experienced outside of Church doctrine and dogma. This thesis explores how Mary is perceived and utilized by the laity, as opposed to the theological Mary, by specifically looking at how the Virgin Mary is imagined and experienced at the Our Lady of Ephesus Shrine in Western Turkey. Utilizing Robert Orsi’s lived religion approach and ethnographic research, this examination of the Virgin Mary will test Daly’s theologically based theory.

This thesis is a narrative inquiry into the experiences of two childrens lives in school. I lived alongside the two children in their grade five classroom for eight months of their school year inquiring into the ways that their school experiences and their relationships with the teacher, classmates, and subject matter influenced the way they composed their stories to live by. In this thesis I share a personal reflection on the way my story to live by has been shaped by my experiences, specifically as a student, a teacher, and a researcher. I use field notes and taped conversations with each of the two boys to retell the stories they shared with me and apply them to literature and theory. I use Deweys Criteria of Experience within a narrative framework to help understand and retell the stories of the two boys as well as Clandinin, Pushor, and Murray Orrs commonplaces of narrative inquiry: place, temporality, and sociality. I explore Aokis planned and lived curriculum and Noddings ethic of care and fidelity in teaching as they applied to the inquiry.