BEING MENTALLY-ILL - A PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY

There have been few studies that have attempted to understand the worl d of one who is mentally ill. This interpretive phenomenological study , which began as a study of the meaning of being restrained, became a glimpse into mental illness, For this study, 10 psychiatric patients w ere questioned in unstructured interviews. The taped interviews were t ranscribed, and the resulting texts were analyzed with use of a modifi cation of an eight-stage process. Heideggerian hermeneutical phenomeno logy provided the philosophical framework for this study. Two major th emes-struggling and ''why me?''-revealed what it is like for the parti cipants to live with a serious mental illness. These participants stru ggled with the staff on the unit, with being restrained, and with the symptoms of their illness. As part of their struggling, they asked, '' Why me?''-a question that could be interpreted existentially as, why a re things the way they are and not some other way? Finally, this study underscores how important it is for the nurse caring for a psychiatri c patient to enter into, and try to understand, the world of patients with mental illnesses. Copyright (C) 1998 by W.B. Saunders Company.