IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v54y2002i12p1853-1866.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The paradoxical use of interpreting in psychiatry

Author

Listed:
  • Drennan, Gerard
  • Swartz, Leslie

Abstract

Changes in the official status of African languages in South Africa suggested an examination of the impact of multi-lingualism on the practice of institutional psychiatry. For a range of theoretical and institutional reasons, a 'language gap' between clinician and patient can be rendered irrelevant in terms of the routine production of psychiatric texts in which 'symptoms' are described and 'cases' are constructed. In contrast to the way in which the role of interpreting is obscured in some hospital settings, it is highlighted in forensic settings. Here the extent of the dependency of the clinician on the interpreter is made more visible. Through this ethnographic exploration of the institutional management of multi-lingualism, the status of 'the patient who requires interpreting' emerges as an institutional construct, being determined in large measure by the routines of institutional practice. The requirements of the institution that the patient move through the process of a hospital admission, and the different requirements of each stage of this process, inform the decision as to whether interpreting is necessary. Furthermore, the differing requirements of the members of the multi-disciplinary teams renders the status of 'the patient who requires interpreting' as variable and contested. Through this analysis the institutional management of multi-lingualism emerges as a site at which discourses of race in psychiatry are reproduced.

Suggested Citation

  • Drennan, Gerard & Swartz, Leslie, 2002. "The paradoxical use of interpreting in psychiatry," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 54(12), pages 1853-1866, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:54:y:2002:i:12:p:1853-1866
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(01)00153-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Deumert, Ana, 2010. "'It would be nice if they could give us more language' - Serving South Africa's multilingual patient base," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 53-61, July.
    2. Mansha Mirza & Elizabeth Harrison & Jacob Bentley & Hui-Ching Chang & Dina Birman, 2020. "Language Discordance in Mental Health Services: An Exploratory Survey of Mental Health Providers and Interpreters," Societies, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, September.
    3. Kilian, Sanja & Swartz, Leslie & Dowling, Tessa & Dlali, Mawande & Chiliza, Bonginkosi, 2014. "The potential consequences of informal interpreting practices for assessment of patients in a South African psychiatric hospital," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 159-167.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:54:y:2002:i:12:p:1853-1866. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.