Everyday life and community-based social support : A study of persons with psychiatric disabilities.

In the wake of deinstitutionalization, people with psychiatric disabilities are, to a great extent, living in the community. In this thesis everyday life of people with psychiatric disabilities, living in independent housing with community-based social support to manage their daily life, is investigated. Special attention is paid to the characteristics and meaning of community-based social support. Through participating observational studies, interviews and time-geographic diaries, data have been gathered about everyday life of seventeen men and women. It is the interpersonal social conditions that have been the main target of the study, addressed as social networks and social support. Everyday life conditions are dependent on social as well as physical and material circumstances. Although the social conditions are emphasized in the study they are not looked upon as isolated dimensions but as part of everyday life circumstances. The everyday life perspective offers an opportunity to reveal the structures within which everyday life takes place. The time-geographic concepts “community-organized projects” and “individual-organized projects” were used to investigate the structures of everyday life, resulting in four substructures. Four types of everyday life and four patterns of networks connected to the different substructures were identified, showing great variations. The characteristics of community-based social support can be summarized as “the doing”, “the talking” and “the being with” in a reciprocal type of relationship. The meaning of support is shortly described as solution of and relieving problems, social companionship, security, protection and control. Community-based social support show similar importance regardless of the type of everyday life when it comes to solution of problems and different importance when it comes to aspects of support such as social companionship.