Time geography : a model for psychiatric life charting?

Since many years, life charting has been used to describe the life course and life events ofpsychiatric patients. The aim of the present study was to describe and evaluate timegeographic life charts of 11 former psychiatric patients in order to promote systematicdescriptions of their life events over time. Information on all events which was gatheredfrom the life charts was analysed by manifest content analysis and reduced to four categories:information received by asking only about moves, social capacity, predisposing lifeevents and/or stressful as well as precipitating life events. Our findings showed that this kindof life charts offered a comprehensive and structured picture. They describe a detailed lifesituation from one time period to another, where geographical sites serve as anchors. Thepatients expressed satisfaction with this method of combining an interview with a timegeographic life line