Interpreting the 'hidden social geographics' of mental health: ethnographies of inclusion and exclusion in semi-institutional places

This paper critically evaluates, through use of covert ethnographic materials, an inner-city drop-in as a semi-institutional place where the identities of people with mental health problems are influenced by social processes of inclusion and exclusion. It is demonstrated, through an in-depth interpretative approach. that it is possible to understand more about the micro-geographies which make up deinstitutionalised landscapes, and about the social relations which characterise these. Key to this paper are findings which indicate that people with mental health problems cannot be understood as a straightforwardly homogenous 'excluded, grouping, and that mainstream processes of boundary maintenance are in operation among these constructed 'others'. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.