Psychiatric discourses of woman abuse

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative investigation of how South African psychiatric services, in the course of their management and treatment of female psychiatric patients, deal with the issue of woman abuse. Discourse analysis was used to analyse the case documents of ten female psychiatric patients who were admitted to a psychiatric hospital in a poorer section of the Western Cape Province, South Africa, all of whom had a history of sexual and/or physical abuse. In this article, the analysis focuses on three broad areas: abuse and the 'syntaxes ' of psychopathology; discourses of blame and responsibility; and the failure of (psychiatric) language. The approach of the investigation was one that critically examined psychiatry, at the same time as specifically investigating psychiatry's response to the issue of woman abuse. Given the South African context of widespread violence against women, together with the transformation of mental health structures, this study formed part of a larger research endeavour geared towards developing appropriate services for the treat-ment and care of women who have been physically or sexually abused. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. The high prevalence of physical and sexual violence against women, both interna-tionally and in South Africa, is well documented. There is growing concern about the implications ofthis for women's health in general and their mental health in particular. Psychiatric institutions continue to hold an important position in the mental health sector in South Africa and are obviously in a prime position to attend to the mental health issues that woman abuse raises. However, it appears that woman abuse is not being adequately taken into account in the management and treatment of female psychiatric patients