The purpose of this thesis “challenges for mentally vulnerable individuals with somatic issues” is to generate knowledge and insight about this complex group of citizens’ everyday life and experiences of somatic challenges. These insights can offer the basis on how to provide more suitable health promotion for these individuals.
It is well known that mentally vulnerable individuals are overrepresented in mortality and lifestyle-related diseases and are considered to be a major economic expenditure for the healthcare system. This thesis argues that to accommodate and treat these individuals, it is necessary to understand their challenges that exists in their everyday lives and their relations with welfare institutions.
Based on in-depth interviews with 9 mentally vulnerable individuals, whom all have somatic issues or have been assigned to somatic-related treatment, this thesis focusses on how they construct their everyday life and experiences with somatic-related issues. Secondly, this thesis contextualizes these constructions and experiences to which generative mechanisms that constitutes them.
The applied method and theory is Norman Faircloughs Critical discourse analysis, together with a view that combines social constructionism and critical realism.
The analysis identified 5 dominant types of discourse which the mentally vulnerable individuals used in their stories about their everyday life and somatic issues. The types of discourses are named: everyday life, barriers, mentally vulnerability as an identity, possibilities for change, and exercise as liberating for the individual.
This thesis concludes that to accommodate and care for this complex group of individuals, there needs to be a focus and understanding of these individuals’ everyday challenges and their identification with their diagnoses. Therefore, it is suggested that a more optimal treatment needs to adjust to the specific individual and the health promotion offered to the main population, do not always apply for mentally vulnerable individuals with somatic challenges.