Denna artikel fokuserar på hur hemtjänstpersonal förhåller sig till utmaningar och dilemman med omsorgstagare med alkoholproblem. Analysen visar hur personalen fokuserar på att spela en roll som omsorgsgivare och förmågan att ”spela teater” som några av förutsättningarna för arbetet. Goffmans dramaturgiska begreppsapparat respektive Hochschilds teorier om emotionellt lönearbete används för att tolka resultaten.

”We meet the involuntary” – social workers talk about older people with alcohol problems

Social workers working in addiction teams in the municipalities rarely have documented collaboration with elder care managers despite the fact that older people with alcohol problems have become more common within elder care, especially home care services. There are few studies of older people with alcohol problems, and knowledge on the subject is scarce. The aim of this study was to investigate how social workers within addiction treatment talk about older people with alcohol problems. Six group interviews and three individual interviews have taken place including a total of 18 social workers. The social workers came from seven different municipalities. Social workers usually meet older people with a long history of abuse and several institutional stays behind them. Many are reluctant to have further contact with social services. In the case of older persons with alcohol problems it is seldom considered appropriate to initiate treatment interventions. Older persons could however sometimes get a place at an abuse institution to get in better shape. In the interviews elder care is often looked upon as a way to get a better situation around an older person with alcohol problems. There are few treatment programmes aimed at older people with alcohol abuse problems. According to the social workers there is a lack of adequate institutional care and various social activities. Nor do older people with alcohol problems fit into activities organized by elder care. One conclusion is the need to develop different treatment interventions targeted at older people with alcohol problems as well as to develop cooperation between elder care and addiction teams.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate howcare managerswent about in theirwork with older people living at homeand having alcohol abuse problems. Method: Six focus group interviews and one interview with two participants were carried out. In total, 23 care managers from five different municipalities participated. Results: The care managers all stressed the fact that within home care, no addiction treatment was conducted. The role of home care was to provide good care helping older people in their everyday lives irrespective of their problems. The care managers had to push the limits for the available services to be able to help older people with alcohol abuse problems. The services offered are however strictly regulated in guidelines. Many older people with alcohol abuse problems were not interested in receiving home care, and they were seldom interested in having contact with the addiction unit. The self-determination of older people in need of home care is strongly stressed in legislation. If the older person did not want any help, there was not much the care managers could do. Conclusions: Since older people today drink more alcohol than earlier generations, there is a need for services and addiction treatment specifically directed at older people with alcohol abuse problems suitable for their needs.

Talking about mental suffering can be defined as producing a shameful, i.e., an embarrassing and painful, text. This essay aims to understand mental illness and recovery through the inside perspective offered by the Swedish playwright Gunilla Linn Persson in her autobiographic narrative poem, by taking a narrative approach to the text. In the form of a tale, Persson recaptures the story of her life. The suppressed stories of a dead child and an abandoned child assume symbolic meaning for three generations of women in her family. She also becomes aware of her own delusions such as staying in a false love relationship. However, the narrative stops being embarrassing and painful for several reasons, one of which being that her daughters specifically ask about it. The story was also tellable because it was composed in retrospect when Persson had recovered from a bipolar disease as well as from alcoholism.

Hearing voices can be considered as elusive or illusory hallucinations in the sense that they are perceptions that have no external reason or even that they are divorced from reality. The aim of this article is to describe how participants in different focus groups account for and understand their voice-hearing experiences. The study shows that voice hearing can be such an overwhelming experience that it can even be experienced as 'more real than reality'. Voices are strong and powerful experiences that sometimes convey memories from the past or difficulties that the voice hearer would prefer to forget but in fact has had to confront. The voices also influence how the voice hearer sees his or her future. This study contributes to our knowledge of the world and language of voice hearers from the perspective of social work.