The limited success of HIV-testing facilities in South Africa means that many people are not accessing necessary antiretroviral treatment services. This study investigates the practical implications of HIV exceptionalism inherent in Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT). A semi-structured interview schedule was used to survey participants for their perspectives on barriers to HIV-testing uptake as well as the effects of exceptionalist practices at VCT clinics. Responses showed marked perceptions of gender differences in people's willingness to test and several important barriers including problems of access to services. Significantly, exceptionalism displayed in certain clinic procedures was thought to contribute to stigma, and attempts to normalise HIV practice in order to combat the effects of stigma were being informally implemented. Participants' views on routine opt-out testing were explored. The researcher recommended further investigation on how HIV testing and treatment policies can be normalised so as to reduce stigma and increase testing uptake. / Social Work / M.A. Sociology (Social Behaviour Studies in HIV/AIDS)

This thesis explores how current ways of imagining possibilities for intersexed and trans embodied lives within medical contexts might be informed by and reimagined through the historical lived experiences of intersexed and trans individuals as they have been articulated in autobiographical accounts. Postmodern, queer, intersex, and trans researchers and activists have criticised existing standards of intersex and trans healthcare for limiting the possibilities for diverse embodied lives by articulating certain forms of embodiment and selfhood as more likely to enable a liveable life than others. This has often been done in a medico-legal context by referring to experiences in the past of the unliveability of corporealities and gendersexed situations that differ from privileged positions. With a point of departure in these critiques, this thesis reopens questions about how intersexed and trans people may be embodied and have relations with others by reflecting upon the period of the first three-quarters of the 20th century, when the present standards of care and diagnostic categories were emerging, but had not yet become established. Drawing upon a unique set of historical source material from the archives of the Danish Ministry of Justice and the Medico-Legal Council, intersexed and trans persons’ life stories are rearticulated from their own and medico-legal experts’ accounts written in relation to applications for change of legal gendersex status and medical transition. In this way, the process is traced through which these life stories have been repeatedly rearticulated in order to become a usable basis for diagnosis and decision-making. At the same time, the stories are unfolded once more in a rearticulation focusing on their complexity and diversity. / Denna avhandling undersöker hur nuvarande sätt att föreställa sig möjligheter för intersexuella och transpersoners liv inom medicinska sammanhang kan informeras av och omföreställas genom historiska livserfarenheter hos intersexuella och transindivider, som de har artikulerats i självbiografiska berättelser. Postmoderna, queer, intersex- och transforskare och aktivister har kritiserat existerande normer för intersex- och transhälsovård för att begränsa möjligheterna för olika förkroppsligande liv genom att artikulera vissa former av förkroppsligande och subjektivitet som mer sannolikt att möjliggöra ett levbart liv än andra. Detta har ofta gjorts i ett medicinskt-juridiskt sammanhang genom att hänvisa till förflutna erfarenheter av levbarhet kring förkroppsligande och genusifierande situationer som skiljer sig från privilegierade positioner. Med utgångspunkt i denna kritik, återupptar denna avhandling frågor om hur intersexuella och transpersoner kan bli förkroppsligade och ha relationer till andra, genom att reflektera kring de första tre fjärdedelarna av nittonhundratalet när de nuvarande normerna för vård och diagnostiska kategorier uppstod, men ännu inte blivit etablerade. Med utgångspunkt i en unik uppsättning av historiskt källmaterial från Danska  Justitiedepartementet och Medicinsk-Etiska Rådets arkiv, återges intersexuella och transpersoners livshistorier från egna och medicinsk-etiska experters berättelser skrivna i relation till ansökningar av förändring av juridiskt kön och medicinsk transition. Genom denna process har livshistorier upprepande gånger blivit omartikulerade för att bli en användbar grund för diagnos och beslutsfattande. Samtidigt är dessa livshistorier uppöppnade än en gång i en omartikulation med fokus på deras komplexitet och mångfald.

Abstract Amidst the worst disaster to impact a major U.S. city in one hundred years, New Orleans’ main trauma and safety net medical center, the Reverend Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital, was permanently closed. Charity’s administrative operator, Louisiana State University (LSU), ordered an end to its attempted reopening by its workers and U.S. military personnel in the weeks following the August 29, 2005 storm. Drawing upon rigorous review of literature and an exhaustive analysis of primary and secondary data, this case study found that Charity Hospital was closed as a result of disaster capitalism. LSU, backed by Louisiana state officials, took advantage of the mass internal displacement of New Orleans’ populace in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in an attempt to abandon Charity Hospital’s iconic but neglected facility and to supplant its original safety net mission serving the poor and uninsured for its neoliberal transformation to favor LSU’s academic medical enterprise.

A l’heure où la prise en charge médicale s’avère de plus en plus nécessaire pour accompagner la fin de vie, il nous apparait que sa place est de plus en plus importante et de moins en moins questionnée. Or, réduire la fin de vie à la question du mourant et de sa prise en charge est pour le moins problématique. L’arrêt d’hydratation et d’alimentation, les différentes formes de sédation, l’euthanasie, le suicide assisté, les soins palliatifs résument-ils à eux seuls ce que l’on peut dire de la fin de vie ? Peut-elle se résumer uniquement à une question d’ordre médical ? N’est-elle pas avant tout une question d’ordre existentiel où, à l’heure de notre déclin, nous sommes confrontés à l’agonie ? Souffrance et finitude se trouvent au cœur de notre interrogation et nous poussent à nous confronter au pâtir de la vie, nous dévoilant ainsi comme être de chair. Grâce à la philosophie henryenne, l’agonie va peu à peu se dévoiler comme une occasion ultime de révélation de soi à soi en tant que soi. Face à l’aporie du mal qui frappe, nous découvrons les hommes capables toujours d’y faire face par un effort de repersonnalisation. C’est cet effort nécessaire qui va se dévoiler tant dans le champ métaphysique, que dans le champ éthique, et que dans le champ politique. C’est ce même effort qui amène l’homme à prendre ses responsabilités et à répondre aux questions existentielles. La subjectivité de chacun se doit alors de devenir le centre de l’institution soignante. L’agonie devient possibilité de repenser la place de la personne au sein du système hospitalier : place de la personne soignante, de la personne soignée, de ceux qui accompagnent, tout en développant une éthique de l’accompagnement qui doit ensuite se décliner dans une politique. Car si, métaphysiquement, vivre son agonie ne peut se justifier que par l’Amour, éthiquement, il nous faut construire une nouvelle poétique de l’action faisant place à la fraternité issue de la chair, à l’imagination de l’homme pour répondre à l’appel d’autrui et de la vie, et à la subsidiarité, afin que chacun soit respecté dans son agir et sa conscience. Politiquement, cela nous ouvre alors à un système hospitalier respectueux de chaque « Je Peux » qui se déploie en son sein. Le respect du consentement du patient reste ainsi la pierre angulaire du système hospitalier ; mais il ne peut se construire que dans une alliance avec les soignants. / In the context of today’s world, medical care is becoming increasingly necessary to assist patients at the end of life. It appears that this care is taking on more and more importance and is subject to fewer and fewer questions. is less and less questioned. However, confining the end of life to the state of dying and its medical support is problematic. Can the end of life be resumed as stopping hydration and artificial feeding, sedation in its different forms, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and palliative care? Can it be summed up as a simple medical question? Isn’t the end of life, first and foremost, linked to an existential question in which, at the time of our decline, we come face to face with agony? Finiteness and suffering are at the heart of our questioning as we confront life’s hardships, revealing the mystery of the flesh. With the help of Michel Henry’s philosophy, agony will gradually reveal itself as an ultimate opportunity for self-revelation. Faced with the paradox of evil, we find Man capable of coping with an effort of re-personification. This necessary effort will unfold in the metaphysical, ethical and political fields. This same effort allows Man to take responsibility for himself and to contemplate existential questions. The subjectivity of each person must become the center of the healthcare institution. Agony becomes the possibility to rethink the place of the individual person within the hospital system: the care giver, the care receiver and those supporting them, all while developing an ethical personal assistance which must then translated into policies. Because even if metaphysically, living out agony cannot be otherwise justified but by Love, ethically we must build a new way of operating. We must leave room for fraternity as a consequence of being of the flesh, to imagination in order to respond to our fellow man and our life’s calling, and to subsidiarity so that everyone is respected in his actions and consciousness. Politically, it opens up the possibility of a hospital system respectful of each "I Can" which is echoed within its walls. Respect for the patient's consent remains the cornerstone of the hospital system but can only be built with an alliance with caregivers.

The limited success of HIV-testing facilities in South Africa means that many people are not accessing necessary antiretroviral treatment services. This study investigates the practical implications of HIV exceptionalism inherent in Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT). A semi-structured interview schedule was used to survey participants for their perspectives on barriers to HIV-testing uptake as well as the effects of exceptionalist practices at VCT clinics. Responses showed marked perceptions of gender differences in people's willingness to test and several important barriers including problems of access to services. Significantly, exceptionalism displayed in certain clinic procedures was thought to contribute to stigma, and attempts to normalise HIV practice in order to combat the effects of stigma were being informally implemented. Participants' views on routine opt-out testing were explored. The researcher recommended further investigation on how HIV testing and treatment policies can be normalised so as to reduce stigma and increase testing uptake. / Social Work / M.A. Sociology (Social Behaviour Studies in HIV/AIDS)

No description available.

Bakgrund. Innan dess att svensk psykiatri genomgick övergripande förändringar genomsyrades mentalhälsovården av olika psykologiska teorier vilka sedermera kom till att utgöra väsentliga beståndsdelar inom den “vårdkulturella revolutionens” fundament. Detta utmynnade därefter i svensk socialpsykiatris tillblivelse varigenom dessa försöksverksamheters väl fungerande praxis och kunskaper till synes har glömts bort genom åren. Metod. När, varför och hur har det gått från att vårdgivare/klient-relationen tidigare har betraktats vara “god” till att i dessa dagar te sig “avhumaniserad”? Hur var denna relation förr, hur är den i dag och hur kan den förslagsvis göras bättre framöver? För att kunna besvara detta tas en närmare blick, genom manifest kvalitativ innehållsanalys med konventionell (induktiv) ansats, på svensk hälso- och sjukvård emellan åren 1960–1980 såväl som en om än konkretiserad djupdykning ned i 1970-talets “nya psykiatri” och socialpsykiatriska försöksverksamheter. Resultat. Vägarna till utformandet av en vårdvärnande relation emellan vårdgivare och klient återfinns inom vårdgivarens bemötande och tillvägagångsätt gentemot klienten. Vad som fordras är en tillitsfull atmosfär och att bådadera parterna upprätthåller kontinuerlig kontakt (Gustafsson, 2010) vari tid bistår med goda förutsättningar i utformningen av funktionella tillika utvecklande allianser (Topor & Denhov, 2012). För att brukarinflytande skall fungera under förebyggande arbete, i led om att i största möjliga mån ta uti klienters problematik, krävs ett krispsykoterapeutiskt förhållningssätt och vetskap om psykisk kris genom vilka genuin närvaro uppnås (Cullberg, 1974). Forskning visar även tydligt att vad som behövs vid vårdbemötande är genuin närvaro, medmänsklig förståelse och rak kommunikation: att inte bara se människan, utan även att förstå vad just denna kris innebär för just denna individ såväl som att klientens beteende sett till sin helhet och vad som inte uttrycks säger så mycket mer än vad ord kan någonsin beskriva. Slutsats. Empirin antyder att aktuell forskning anmärker vad som fungerar bra och mindre bra, om inte alls, i relation till vårdbemötande är för all del bra. Men vad om nordisk socialpsykiatris pionjärer såsom Berggren, Cullberg och Haugsgjerd? Aktuell forskning refererar inte till någondera och deras arv tycks vara bortglömt. Så vad om all den kunskap och insikt som förvärvades och införlivades vid tidigare försöksverksamheter såsom Cullbergs kristeori och krispsykoterapi? Aktuell forskning refererar heller inte till någotdera och alltsammans tycks ha gått i stöpet. Vad som däremot framgår är att deras visioner tillämpades med mycket goda resultat vid bland annat Nackaprojektet tillika att sagda teori och psykoterapi tycks ha runnit ut i sanden efter verksamhetens nedläggning. Psykologin och psykiatrin, till syvende och sist, rör sig i ett gränsland emellan vetenskap och humaniora däri de, i samvaro med etisk kodex om att all behandling skall vila på “vetenskap och beprövad erfarenhet”, samexisterar i led om att med fumliga försök fånga livets komplexiteter. Men vart någonstans bör gränsdragningen gå emellan “vetenskaplig professionalitet” och “personlig inlevelse” när man möter någon med psykisk ohälsa, en medmänniska i psykisk kris? / Background. Prior to the undertaking of radical changes in Swedish psychiatry, various psychological theories permeated mental healthcare that would subsequently become essential components at the very heart of the “care-cultural revolution.” This subsequently resulted in the creation of Swedish social psychiatry through which trial establishments’ well-functioning praxis and knowledge have, so it seems, been forgotten over the years. Method. How, when and why has it gone from the fact that the caregiver/client-relationship has previously been considered as “good” to in these days feel as though it has become “dehumanized”? How was this relationship in the past, how is it as of today, and how can it be made better for the future? In order to answer this, a closer look, through manifest qualitative content analysis with conventional (inductive) approach, is taken on Swedish health care throughout the 1960s–1980s as well as an elaborate deep dive down into the “new psychiatry” of the 1970s and social psychiatric trial establishments. Result. The paths to the formation of a care-ensuring relationship between caregiver and client are found within caregivers’ attitude and approach towards their clients. What is required is a trusting atmosphere and that both parties maintain continuous contact (Gustafsson, 2010) wherein time provides good conditions in the formation of functional and developing alliances (Topor & Denhov, 2012). In order for user influence to function during preventive work, in line with addressing clients’ problems as much as possible, a crisis psychotherapeutic approach and knowledge of mental crisis is required through which genuine presence is achi-eved (Cullberg, 1974). Research also clearly shows that what is needed during care meetings is genuine presence, compassionate understanding, and straightforward communication: not only to see the person, but also to understand what this particular crisis means for this particular individual as well as that his or her behavior in itself and what is not being expressed says so much more than words can ever describe. Conclusion. Empirical data suggests that current research remarks on what works well and less well, if not at all, in relation to care treatment is certainly good. But what about the pioneers of Nordic social psychiatry like Berggren, Cullberg, and Haugsgjerd? Current research refers to neither and their legacies seem to have been forgotten. So, what about all the know-ledge and insight that was acquired and incorporated in previous experimental activities such as Cullberg's crisis theory and crisis psychotherapy? Current research refers, likewise, to neither and everything seems to have gone down the drain. What is clear, however, is that their visions were applied with very good results in, amongst other things, the Nacka Project as well as that said theory and psychotherapy seem to have faded away following the trial establishment’s closure. Psychology and psychiatry, ultimately, move in a borderland between science and the humanities wherein they, in conjunction with the code of ethics that all treatment is to be based on “science and proven experience,” coexist in line with fumble attempts to capture life’s complexities. But where exactly should the line be drawn between “scientific professionalism” and “personal insight” when meeting someone with mental ill-health, a fellow human being in a mental crisis?