An Investigation into the Experience of Having Multiple Readmissions to Psychiatric Hospital

This paper is drawn from a wider project focusing on the stories of psychiatric
patients elicited from collective case studies. The stories are biographically
constructed from the patients’ narratives of their experience of the ‘revolving
door’ phenomenon. This is a phrase often used in psychiatric discourse to refer
to multiple readmissions to psychiatric hospital. Given that the quest for
meaning in the social world is firmly embedded within its various institutional
structures (and that these structures influence the resulting stories), there is a
conceptual concern regarding the potential identities embodied in each patient
and how they are interpreted and accommodated by the social environment.