Home bittersweet home: the significance of home for occupational transformations.

BACKGROUND

The study illuminated how persons with psychiatric disabilities experienced the processes of change in a residential context.

MATERIAL: Qualitative interviews with residents living in supported housing were conducted and analyzed using constant comparative analysis.

DISCUSSION: Residential conditions appear to provide a complex structure that facilitates rehabilitative interactions, in which 'progressive tensions' arise between opposing values, such as authentic versus artificial, and independence versus dependence, both of which are important in the process of change.

CONCLUSIONS

A client-centred approach could be taken further if clients are engaged in productive discussions about challenging these 'progressive tensions'. Awareness of the meaning of home also emerged as central.