Papers by Jennifer M Poole
Career Narratives and Academic Womanhood, 2023
Academic email signatures are a paradigmatic form of self-construction in academic career surviva... more Academic email signatures are a paradigmatic form of self-construction in academic career survival, perhaps especially so for those of us who are uneasy academics. In a pithy and contained format, signatures exist as a form of life writing that allows for celebration (promotions!), resignation (academic service!), critical questioning (social and geographic locations), grief (inclusion of the name of institutions named after problematic individuals) and the situation of a mythic individual self within a larger academic performance. While there are set expectations and criteria, signatures are defined as much by confusion and contradiction. As a result, they are an exercise in self-making, albeit generally at an unconscious level. For this chapter, we found ourselves wondering what would happen if we exposed the unconscious wrangling with which we devise our signatures and allowed them to exist as a deliberate and self-aware performance.
Medical Humanities, Sep 28, 2017
Critical and Radical Social Work
Colonial critical social work education is a strange place. It professes a goal of social justice... more Colonial critical social work education is a strange place. It professes a goal of social justice but subscribes to an often-unconscious compliance with what has been named as ‘colonial’ or ‘white time’. White time sets and enforces limits for the completion of courses, programmes and assignments. Such colonial chrononormativity also sets and enforces what counts as and in history. In this article, we question this time compliance, tracing literature on critical temporalities that take up, for example, crip, queer and pandemic time. Drawing on abolitionist work, we then outline how colonial time may also be transcarceral, that is, confining and punishing, especially when we commit time-crime and ‘miss’ a deadline. Indeed, by delving into the little-known but violent history of deadlines, we hope to encourage more refusals of transcarceral time, as well as deliberate discussions that create space for a range of temporalities in our classrooms and beyond.
The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies, 2021
International encyclopedia of the social and behavioural sciences, 2nd edition, 2015
Abstract Mentalism or sanism is a devastating form of oppression, often leading to negative stere... more Abstract Mentalism or sanism is a devastating form of oppression, often leading to negative stereotyping and arguments that individuals with mental health histories are not fit to study, work or enjoy basic human rights. Despite fifty years of scholarship and recent developments in policy and research, the terms are still rarely used, understood or interrogated in the social sciences. Indeed, social work in particular has been so loyal to the medical model that mentalist/sanist aggressions, such as pathologizing, labelling, exclusion and dismissal have become a typical part of best professional practice and education. In this section, we provide an overview, history, analysis of and response to mentalism and sanism.
Sanism, 'Mental Health', and Social Work/Education: A Review and Call to Action.
by Poole, J., Jivraj, T., Arslanian, A., Bellows, K., Chiasson, S., Hakimy, H., Pasini, J. & Reid, J. Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis,, 2012
Sanism is a devastating form of oppression, often leading to negative stereotyping or arguments t... more Sanism is a devastating form of oppression, often leading to negative stereotyping or arguments that individuals with 'mental health' histories are not fit to study social work. However, the term sanism is rarely used, understood, or interrogated in the social work academy, even in anti-oppressive spaces. Indeed, social work has been so loyal to the medical model that sanist aggressions, such as pathologizing, labelling, exclusion, and dismissal have become a 'normal' part of professional practice and education. We query the moral integrity of a profession that at its foundational core could play a role in such a discriminatory tactic as sanism. We wonder what the effect of this has been on social work and its education. We ask, who has been excluded, what has been silenced or denied because of the privileging of medical conceptualizations of madness, and how can we work toward anti-sanist social work today? In this paper we provide an overview of sanism. We offer a ...
Narrative Art and the Politics of Health (Anthem)., 2021
These are grief-saturated times. With COVID-19, death is everywhere, but despite what the hashtag... more These are grief-saturated times. With COVID-19, death is everywhere, but despite what the hashtag claims, we are not #Allinthistogether. White supremacy has drawn the lines of life and death and whose grief matters. In this chapter, we problematize how white supremacy operates through discourses and practices around grief and loss. Naming this operation as grief supremacy, we trace how it exalts white grief and loss, white ways of grieving, mourning and denigrates anything else it finds in its way. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and work on whiteness and Anti-Black Racism, we trace how grief supremacy manifests in the DSM, in policies around bereavement leave and in life and death during COVID-19. We also suggest sites of action and transformation, turning towards the work of those de-centering white things in grieving and mourning now.
Critical Social Work
Former BSW student: I’m really worried about this job interview. I know they are going to think I... more Former BSW student: I’m really worried about this job interview. I know they are going to think I am too critical, too passionate, too much. How can I dumb myself down Jennifer? How do I get in the door so I can do the work I want to do? Maybe staying quiet will get me the job I need…maybe I should shut up about AOP? This was part of a conversation I had last week, with a passionate, anti-oppressive and critical former undergraduate student who had been told, on more than one occasion, that she was just “too much” for the ‘mainstream’ social work organizations to which she had been applying for employment. It was not the first time one of my graduates had shared such worries, for many had reported negative workplace reactions to their critical and anti-oppressive stance, nor would it be the last. As the literature reminds us, social workers are now labouring in a post-welfare context where critiques of power, racism, ageism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism will not make ‘best pract...
Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2016
Review of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness by Burstow.
Mad Studies challenges us to think beyond mainstream notions of "mental illness." Panel... more Mad Studies challenges us to think beyond mainstream notions of "mental illness." Panelists will discuss this social justice approach as an important contribution to other vital discussions of learning and teaching from the margins. Drawing from Disability Studies and Social Work, panelists will explore the historical roots of this emergent field, curriculum and teaching strategies, and how students respond to mad positive academic spaces.
Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 2014
Of heart transplant recipients, 30 per cent report ongoing or episodic emotional issues post-tran... more Of heart transplant recipients, 30 per cent report ongoing or episodic emotional issues post-transplant, which are not attributable to medications or pathophysiological changes. To this end, our team theorized that cardiac transplantation introduces pressing new questions about how patients incorporate a transplanted heart into their sense of self and how this impacts their identity. The work of Merleau-Ponty provided the theoretical underpinning for this project as it rationalizes how corporeal changes affect one’s self and offer an innovative framework to access these complex aspects of living with a transplanted heart. We used visual methodology and recorded 25 semi-structured interviews videographically. Both visual and verbal data were analyzed at the same time in an iterative process. The most common theme was that participants expressed a disruption to their own identity and bodily integrity. Additionally, participants reported interconnectedness with the donor, even when the...
Medical Humanities, 2009
Heart transplantation is now the accepted therapy for end-stage heart failure that is resistant t... more Heart transplantation is now the accepted therapy for end-stage heart failure that is resistant to medical treatment. Families of deceased donors routinely are urged to view the heart as a pump that will enable the donor to live on by extending and sustaining the life of a stranger. In contrast, heart recipients are encouraged to view the organ mechanistically-as a new pump that was rendered a spare, reusable part when a generous stranger died. Psychosocial and psychoanalytic research, anecdotal evidence and first-person accounts indicate that after transplant, many recipients experience unexpected changes or distress that cannot be understood adequately using biomedical explanatory models alone. In this paper it is argued that phenomenological philosophy offers a promising way to frame an ongoing empirical study that asks recipients to reflect on what it is like to incorporate the heart of another person. Merleau-Ponty and others have posited that any change to the body inevitably transforms the self. Hence, it is argued in this paper that replacing failing hearts with functioning hearts from deceased persons must be considered much more than a complex technical procedure. Acknowledging the disturbances to embodiment and personal identity associated with transplantation may explain adverse outcomes that heretofore have been inexplicable. Ultimately, a phenomenological understanding could lead to improvements in the consent process, preoperative teaching and follow-up care.
International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 2010
How do we limit our focus to mental health when Indigenous teaching demands a much wider lens? Ho... more How do we limit our focus to mental health when Indigenous teaching demands a much wider lens? How do we respond to mental health recovery when Indigenous experience speaks to a very different approach to healing, and how can we take up the health of Indigenous people in Canada without a discussion of identity and colonization? We cannot, for the mental health and recovery of Indigenous people in Canada have always been tied to history, identity, politics, language and dislocation. Thus, in this paper, our aim is to make clear that history, highlight the impacts of colonization and expound on Indigenous healing practices taking place in Toronto. Based on findings from a local research project, we argue these healing practices go beyond limited notions of recovery and practice, offering profound and practical ways to address the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health of Indigenous peoples.
The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, 2011
Quality of life (QoL) studies in heart transplant recipients (HTRs) using validated, quantitative... more Quality of life (QoL) studies in heart transplant recipients (HTRs) using validated, quantitative, self-report questionnaires have reported poor QoL in approximately 20% of patients. This consecutive mixed methods study compared self-report questionnaires, the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short Form Health Survey (MOS SF-36) and the Atkinson Life Satisfaction Scale, with phenomenologically informed audiovisual (AV) qualitative interview data in 27 medically stable HTRs (70% male; age 53 Ϯ 13.77 years; time since transplant 4.06 Ϯ 2.42 years). Self-report questionnaire data reported poor QoL and more distress compared with previous studies and normative population samples; in contrast, 52% of HTRs displayed pervasive distress according to visual methodology. Using qualitative methods to assess QoL yields information that would otherwise remain unobserved by the exclusive use of quantitative QOL questionnaires.
JPHE, 2022
COVID-19 has saturated many spaces in loss and grief. Higher education has been saturated too, de... more COVID-19 has saturated many spaces in loss and grief. Higher education has been saturated too, despite ongoing institutional demands that educators mitigate and manage the grief away. Such demands expose the colonial and carceral logics that operate in much of so-called higher education, logics that may often create what we call 'transcarceral grief'. Inspired by abolitionist activist scholarship, we understand transcarceral grief as an involuntary response to the surveillance, compliance, discipline, and punishment practices (or carceral logics) that have made education a site of restriction and confinement. Such a lens demonstrates how dangerous many of the 'must-do's' of grief and pedagogy can be and changes how we understand our own pandemic pedagogy. Thus, in this piece, we draw on scholarship, activism, theory, and narrated experiences to identify and work against transcarcerality while teaching/learning with grief in our Canadian and American institutions. Rather than mitigating, managing or recovering from grief, we offer a grief-facing praxis that has the potential to disrupt and reform how we metabolize grief in higher education. Further, we posit that our anti-transcarceral grief pedagogy has the potential to move us closer to the life-affirming space that we crave more than ever both in and out of the classroom.
Today’s Youth and Mental Health
Qualitative Health Research
Critical qualitative health researchers typically occupy and navigate liminal academic spaces and... more Critical qualitative health researchers typically occupy and navigate liminal academic spaces and statuses, with one foot planted in the arts and social sciences and the other in biomedical science. We are at once marginalized and empowered, and this liminality presents both challenges and opportunities. In this article, we draw on our experiences of being (often the lone) critical qualitative health scholars on thesis advisory committees and dissertation examinations, as well as our experiences of publishing and securing funding, to illuminate how power and knowledge relations create conditions that shape the nature of our roles. We share strategies we have developed for standing our theoretical and methodological ground. We discuss how we use the power of our liminality to hold firm, push back, and push forward, to ensure that critical qualitative research is not further relegated to the margins and its quality and integrity sustained.
Handbooks in Health, Work, and Disability, 2016
In this chapter we present an overview of qualitative research in the mental health field. We pro... more In this chapter we present an overview of qualitative research in the mental health field. We provide an historical account of the vital role that qualitative methods have played in the development of theoretical and practice approaches of psychiatry, and their current use in contemporary mental health practice. We consider how different approaches to qualitative research are used to advance knowledge and understanding of mental health, mental illness, and related services and systems, as well as the contributions of qualitative research to the mental health field. We then provide a synthesis of evidence derived from qualitative research within the mental health sector, spanning four key areas: (1) recovery, (2) stigma, (3) employment, and (4) housing. We conclude this chapter with a review of the ongoing challenges facing qualitative researchers in this area
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Papers by Jennifer M Poole
We have heard echoes of this argument from scholars situated in the fields of anti-psychiatry, critical mental health, and Mad studies. Yet, for us, three social work scholars at various stages of our careers, the breadth and depth of Burstow’s accounting is not only spectacular but new. In a clear and accessible way, Burstow takes us through personal, historical, narrative, institutional, economic, political, and discursive landscapes. She shows us how each is a part of her particular “study of psychiatry” (1) and “all that surrounds it” including governments, the legal system and “mechanisms of enforcement” (2). Importantly, she shows us what the consequences of it all have been on our friends, family members, colleagues, and ourselves. Burstow is not afraid to question the whole mental health system, and how it has come to be that “people believe what medical doctors state and what medicinal doctors recommend” (3). Boldly, she asks, “what if this were not legitimate medicine...what if psychiatry’s fundamental tenets and conceptualizations were inherently faulty? Indeed, what if-despite some helpful practitioners-it does far more harm than good” (1)?