Being Understood: Epistemic Injustice Towards Young People Seeking Support for Their Mental Health

Abstract

Across many domains, it is important for us to feel that we are understood by others. This is crucial when we are disclosing a vulnerability or seeking help for a problem. When these disclosures or helpseeking requests relate to mental health difficulties, our interactions with others can carry many threats, including stigmatisation; inappropriate moral or character judgements; overly stringent threshold evaluations; and assumptions about our personal circumstances and social resources. In this chapter, we summarise some of the core findings from empirical and qualitative studies which examine what happens when young people meet with health professionals to disclose or to seek help for their experiences with poor mental health. We then draw out some key implications for improving relational and communicative practices amongst mental health professionals. We focus on those implications which are highlighted by those members of our team who are young adults with experiences of accessing mental health services and reflect on these implications in the light of insights from the literature on epistemic injustice.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68881-2_1
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology
College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Institute of Health & Neurodevelopment (AIHN)
Aston University (General)
Additional Information: Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Agency,Clinical encounters,Felt understanding,Mental health,Youth,General Medicine,General Psychology,General Social Sciences,General Nursing,General Health Professions
ISBN: 9783031688805 (hbk), 9783031688812
Last Modified: 06 Jun 2025 07:05
Date Deposited: 05 Jun 2025 12:03
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://link.sp ... 3-031-68881-2_1 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Chapter
Published Date: 2024-11-17
Authors: Larkin, Michael (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-3304-7000)
McCabe, Rose
Bortolotti, Lisa
Broome, Matthew
Craythorne, Shioma-Lei (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-9075-947X)
Temple, Rachel
Lim, Michele
Fadashe, Catherine
Sims, Chris
Sharples, Oscar
Cottrell, Josh

Download

[img]

Version: Published Version

License: Creative Commons Attribution


Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record