Convicting and incarcerating innocent people has damaging consequences for individuals that can last a lifetime (Grounds, 2004; Konvisser, 2010; Cutler, 2012). Research in this area from a psychological perspective is in its infancy and there is a need to expand this. Currently no research has been conducted in this area from the perspective of counselling psychology. Therefore. this study aims to contribute towards the current body of literature of wrongful incarceration from this perspective. This study takes a qualitative approach to the exploration of the phenomenon of wrongful incarceration. Seven Mexican men with an indigenous background, who claimed to have been wrongfully incarcerated in Mexico City, took part in semi-structured interviews, which were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Three superordinate themes and subsequent subthemes were identified . These themes related to the mechanisms of survival employed by participants to cope with their incarceration; to their real and inner relations with others; and to their perception of and the changes and losses following the experience. Results show that participants manifested a number of defense mechanisms and developed coping strategies to cope with the experience. Participants spoke about the importance of external family support and t heir mental internal resources for surviving the experience. They also discussed the impact of the experience in their self-concept and on t heir life post incarceration. Implications for clinical practice and for settings working with people undergoing a similar experience are discussed. Moreover, routes for future research are considered
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:594180 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Sánchez Ortiz, Varinia Cecilia |
| Publisher | City University London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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