The Personal Interview

Although a growing number of projects have been implemented using the community-based participatory research method known as photovoice, no known systematic review of the literature on this approach has been conducted to date. This review draws on the peer-reviewed literature on photovoice in public health and related disciplines conducted before January 2008 to determine (a) what defines the photovoice process, (b) the outcomes associated with photovoice, and (c) how the level of community participation is related to photovoice processes and outcomes. In all, 37 unduplicated articles were identified and reviewed using a descriptive coding scheme and Viswanathan et al.’s quality of participation tool. Findings reveal no relationship between group size and quality of participation but a direct relationship between the latter and project duration as well as with getting to action. More participatory projects also were associated with long-standing relationships between the community and outside researcher partners and an intensive training component. Although vague descriptions of project evaluation practices and a lack of consistent reporting precluded hard conclusions, 60% of projects reported an action component. Particularly among highly participatory projects, photovoice appears to contribute to an enhanced understanding of community assets and needs and to empowerment.

/pdf/photovoice-a-review-of-the-literature-in-health-and-public-t5bqgxhtz7.pdf

Photovoice: A Review of the Literature in Health and Public Health:

In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. The Difference is about how we think in groups--and how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity--not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities. The Difference reveals that progress and innovation may depend less on lone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality. Page shows how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, he explains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers fascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago "El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup. Page changes the way we understand diversity--how to harness its untapped potential, how to understand and avoid its traps, and how we can leverage our differences for the benefit of all.

Prologue to The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies

Modifying Photovoice for community-based participatory Indigenous research

As far back as we know, there have been individuals inca-pacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder". Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomemon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions, a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilising these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in a psychiatric unit specialising in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the tran-scripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.@@@Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory.

The role of testimony and documentation is crucial to human rights work in transitional contexts. Such evidence is vital in societies seeking to deal with a past of human rights violations as well as for ongoing human rights campaigns. The documentation of past human rights violations can help with the prosecution of perpetrators, identification of victims for reparations programmes, and the planning of memorials. It can also contribute to the embedding of a new human rights culture through the active dissemination of personal testimonies which can sensitize the public to past violations, assist in rewriting of school textbooks and other educational materials, and lead to recommendations for new forms of human rights practice. These are practical measures of dealing with the past which are all underpinned by accurate knowledge of violations and the contexts which made them possible. But at a deeper level, information, testimonies and archives can shape narratives of the past and the future, and they can arguably help to define a new social contract between citizens and the state following gross human rights violations, and give voice to ongoing tensions and disagreements about what, in fact, constitutes the past. That being said, the identification, protection, preservation and management of archives and the collection of testimonies related to human rights violations, as well as their dissemination and utility within transitional justice mechanisms, has often been overlooked. Both partners of the editorial team, Incore (International Conflict Research Institute, based at Ulster University) and swisspeace (an associate research institute of the University of Basel), have been working on addressing this gap by bringing together academics, practitioners and policymakers. At swisspeace the ‘Archives and Dealing with the Past’ project is a joint initiative of the Human Security Division of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Federal Archives and swisspeace (see http://archivesproject.swisspeace. ch). In addition to research, publications and training, the project operates as a platform bringing together diverse actors working on archives in the context of dealing with the past processes and to this end organizes a regular conference. In 2012 the focus was ‘The Importance of Archives in Dealing with the Past’, in 2013 ‘Archives of Transitional Justice Mechanisms’, and in 2015 ‘Securing Archives at Risk’. (The report of the 2015 conference

/pdf/documentation-human-rights-and-transitional-justice-3hh2l5a8en.pdf

Documentation, Human Rights and Transitional Justice

Refugees can face a range of social, political, cultural, existential and spiritual challenges that extend beyond the impact of discrete events or direct psychological and physical harms Such suffering can only be understood relative to and dependent upon the context in which it is experienced Context is a major, not a tangential, component of conceptualising assistance to refugees Hans Keilson’s approach of sequential traumatisation shows that interventions to assist refugees need to extend to understanding the role of the context over time and that past experiences are always reinterpreted through the prism of the present Different community and individual processes (such as testimony and social activism) can create new contextual meaning for refugees Changing the context is a psychological intervention There is a responsibility on mental health workers and practitioners to find ways to change and influence the socio-political context

Changing Context and Changing Lenses: A Contextual Approach to Understanding the Impact of Violence on Refugees

The study presented here explores how the impact of the conflict, as it applies to interventions with young men, is conceptualised within the context of Northern Ireland after the signing of the peace agreement (1998). It focuses on four groups undertaking psychosocial work, that is, two generic support groups and two groups with an explicit focus on those who had experienced violence during the conflict. A total of 20 young men (18–24 years old) and 19 staff were individually interviewed, using a semi-structured interview. The study found that many challenges facing young people concern the interrelationship between the past and a poor socioeconomic context in the present. The struggle to address the legacy of the conflict in the present is, certainly in the literature and according to the participants of this study, linked to a lack of knowledge about the past. When it came to promoting such change and building peace, participants tended to ascribe to a personal transformation model as the route to engagement with peacebuilding work. This article argues that the personal transformative model is emblematic of the wider peacebuilding debate in Northern Ireland, where psychosocial and peace orientated programming has been separated from wider peacebuilding strategies, such as job creation. This highlights an analytical deficit in the psychosocial programming, peacebuilding and economic development fields.

/pdf/ships-passing-in-the-night-psychosocial-programming-and-vpy8tkr1mr.pdf

Ships passing in the night: psychosocial programming and macro peacebuilding strategies with young men in Northern Ireland

The psychosocial impact of armed conflict in post-conflict societies has become an area of major focus globally and in post-conflict Northern Ireland. The study presented in this chapter explores how the impact of the conflict, as it applies to interventions with young men, is conceptualised in the context of post-Agreement Northern Ireland. The study examines the experiences and perspectives of young men (18–24 years old) in Northern Ireland and those working with young men. The study focuses on four groups undertaking psychosocial work, that is, two generic young men support groups and two groups with an explicit focus on victims/survivors of the conflict. A total of 20 young men and 19 staff were individually interviewed. Semi-structured interview questions and the General Help-seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) were used to ascertain how groups understand trauma and how they understand the impact of the conflict on young men. The findings showed that the challenges facing young people concern the interrelationship between the past, and a poor socio-economic context in the present. The young men in our study presented with stark and acute mental and social health challenges, and masculine ideologies were found to have a negative impact on men’s help-seeking intentions. The theme of resilience, risk and identity was also a critical component of the findings of the study. When it came to promoting such change both the staff and the young men tended to ascribe to a personal transformation model as the route to engagement with peacebuilding work. This chapter argues that the personal transformative model is emblematic of the wider peacebuilding debate in Northern Ireland, where psychosocial and peace-orientated programming has been separated out from wider peacebuilding strategies such as job creation. This highlights an analytical deficit in the psychosocial programming, as well as the peacebuilding and socio-economic fields.

Brandon Hamber

Papers

Documentation, Human Rights and Transitional Justice

Changing Context and Changing Lenses: A Contextual Approach to Understanding the Impact of Violence on Refugees

Ships passing in the night: psychosocial programming and macro peacebuilding strategies with young men in Northern Ireland

Addressing the Psychosocial Needs of Young Men: The Case of Northern Ireland

Transitional justice and intergroup conflict