The Research Interview in Adult Mental Health: Problems and Possibilities for Discourse Studies

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to critically discuss the research interview in adult mental health by examining the ways in which discourse studies can further contribute to the understanding of research practice. Importantly, research practice is conceptualised here as an object of study in itself, in that it produces subjects and has effects. In other words, the practice of using the research interview simultaneously enacts a method of data collection and creates a re-presentation of interviewees' accounts that reproduce, maintain, or transform dominant psychological thinking about humans and health (or adult mental health). The ways we practise as researchers, therefore, are inseparable from the findings that are produced. In this chapter, we explore existing critical considerations about the research interview, several problems and possibilities that discourse studies encounter in health research, and what implications there are for education and research practice to inform the research interview in adult mental health.