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Infrahumanisation: the nurse versus the guard phenomenon in forensic psychiatric practice in Zimbabwe

VIRGININIA DUBE-MAWEREWERE (Health Studies, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa AND Department of Mental Health Education, Ingutsheni Central Hospital, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.)

The Journal of Forensic Practice

ISSN: 2050-8794

Article publication date: 11 May 2015

165

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the lived experiences of nurses involved in rehabilitation of forensic psychiatric patients in special institutions in Zimbabwe.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used the grounded theory approach utilising a mixed sequential dominant status design (QUAL/Quant). Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual canon of field, habitus and capital was used as a theoretical point of departure by the research study. Confirmatory retrospective document review of 119 patients’ files was also done to substantiate the nurses’ experiences. Theoretical sampling of relatives was also done.

Findings

Findings and results revealed that nurses seemed to experience infrahumanisation, a subtler form of dehumanisation. The infrahumanisation was embodied in the unpleasant context in which nurses were expected to perform their mandate of championing rehabilitation of forensic psychiatric patients. The guards who represented the prison system seemed to possess all forms of capital in the prison system (where special institutions are housed): the prison cultural capital, social capital and economic capital. This capital seemed to represent symbolic power over the disillusioned and voiceless nurses. Guards attended to and discussed patients and relatives issues instead of nurses. This form of misrecognition of the nurses culminated in dominance and reproduction of the interests of the prison system which underlined the established order of realities in the rehabilitation of forensic psychiatric patients in special institutions at the time of the study. The nurses’ lived experience was confirmed by theoretically sampled by relatives of forensic psychiatric patients who also participated in the research study. Nurses’ powerlessness was also reflected in the patients’ files in which in which care was largely not documented.

Research limitations/implications

The study focused on the nurses experiences related to rehabilitation of male forensic psychiatric patients and not on female forensic psychiatric patients because there were important variables in the two groups that were not homogenous. For the little documentation that was done, there was also a tendency nurses to document negative rather than positive events and trends. The documents/files of patients had therefore a negative bias which was a major limitation to this study.

Practical implications

There is a need for major revision of the revision of the role of the nurse in the forensic psychiatric setting. Collaboration as academia, practice, professional organisations and regulatory bodies would foster a nurse led therapeutic jurisprudence in the future of rehabilitation of forensic psychiatric patients in Zimbabwe.

Social implications

There is a need for major revision of the revision of the role of the nurse in the forensic psychiatric setting.

Originality/value

This is the first description of the position of nurses’ seconded to special institutions in Zimbabwe and will go a long way in realigning conflictual policy documents guiding care of forensic psychiatric patients in special institutions.

Keywords

Citation

DUBE-MAWEREWERE, V. (2015), "Infrahumanisation: the nurse versus the guard phenomenon in forensic psychiatric practice in Zimbabwe", The Journal of Forensic Practice, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 149-164. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-10-2014-0038

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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