Mercer Dave, Perkins Elizabeth
Department of Nursing, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.
William Rathbone VI Chair of Community Nursing Research, Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2018 Jul-Aug;59:38-43. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2018.05.004. Epub 2018 Jun 8.
English high-secure hospitals have contained individuals deemed mentally disordered, and dangerous, since the mid-nineteenth century. With the development of gender sensitive services female patients have been moved out of these institutions into smaller secure settings. Female staff continue to work in high secure hospitals, but are often in a minority in these services. Little is known about how female staff experience the everyday world of work. This paper is based on in-depth interviews with female nurses employed in a unit caring for detained male sexual offenders with a diagnosis of personality disorder. It forms part of a much larger discourse-analytic study of nine patients, with a history of sexual offending, and eighteen mental health nurses, which focused on talk about pornography and criminality. The findings from this project have been previously reported in Mercer and Perkins (2014). This paper demonstrates how patriarchy remains an enduring cultural characteristic of caring for men detained under the Mental Health Act (1983, 2007) because of sexually violent crimes against women and children. It textures the ward environment and the relationships between people who work within it, constructing women as 'outsiders' and producing a masculine culture which leaves female staff feeling vulnerable and at risk. The analytic focus of the paper is concerned with exploring how women experience working in the male-dominated environment of a high-security Personality Disorder Unit (PDU). Three discursive repertoires are identified: the institutional space as male, the impact of working with men detained as a result of sexual offending, and the construction of therapeutic work as a 'job for the boys'. In this world, female staff, as a product of their gender, constructed themselves both as at risk and inviting risk.
自19世纪中叶以来，英国的高度戒备医院一直收治那些被认定患有精神疾病且具有危险性的人。随着对性别敏感服务的发展，女性患者已从这些机构转移至规模较小的安全场所。女性工作人员继续在高度戒备医院工作，但在这些服务中她们往往占少数。对于女性工作人员如何体验日常工作环境，我们知之甚少。本文基于对一家收治被拘留的男性性犯罪者（被诊断患有精神障碍）的科室中女性护士的深入访谈。它是一项规模大得多的话语分析研究的一部分，该研究涉及9名有性犯罪史的患者和18名心理健康护士，重点关注关于色情制品和犯罪行为的讨论。该项目的研究结果先前已在默瑟和珀金斯（2014年）的报告中有所呈现。本文展示了父权制如何仍然是根据《精神健康法》（1983年、2007年）因针对妇女和儿童的性暴力犯罪而被拘留的男性护理工作中一种持久的文化特征。它塑造了病房环境以及在其中工作的人员之间的关系，将女性建构为“局外人”，并产生一种男性文化，使女性工作人员感到脆弱且处于危险之中。本文的分析重点在于探讨女性在高度戒备的人格障碍科室这一男性主导的环境中工作的体验。识别出了三种话语模式：将机构空间视为男性空间、与因性犯罪被拘留的男性一起工作的影响，以及将治疗工作建构为“男性的工作”。在这个世界里，女性工作人员因其性别身份，既将自己建构为处于危险之中，又吸引着风险。
