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• Childhood narratives about the experience of growing up with alcoholic parents

  2019. Anneli Silvén Hagström. Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 36 (3), 299-301

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• 'If I whistled in her ear she'd wake up'

  2019. Anneli Silvén Hagström, Ulla Forinder. Journal of Family Studies

  Artikel

  This article aims to investigate what it means to grow up in an alcoholic family environment. Nineteen children aged 6–11 who participated in a psycho-educational programme in the 1990s for children living with parents who misuse alcohol were interviewed about their experiences in a longitudinal study. A narrative analysis of their life stories demonstrates how, on the one hand, they positioned themselves as ‘vulnerable victims’ exposed to their parent’s alcoholism and to situations of severe neglect, domestic violence and sexual abuse. This position was characterized by a sense of powerlessness and lack of resources for coping with emotional distress and risk, as well as an urgent need for protection and care. On the other hand, the children positioned themselves as ‘competent agents’ who had developed purposeful strategies for managing their life situation, such as trying to reduce their parent’s drinking and undertaking the role of a ‘young carer’. The children primarily tried to normalize themselves in their social circle in a position of ‘silenced and invisible victims’. However, the alcoholism was usually exposed and the children occasionally also found themselves in the position of ‘help-seeking victims’ obliged to disclose the ‘family secret’. Remarkably, this rarely changed their situation very much. Instead, the children were commonly left in the position of ‘visible but unprotected victims’.

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• Research-Based Theater and “Stigmatized Trauma”

  2020. Anneli Silvén Hagström. Frontiers in Psychology

  Artikel

  Background: Existing research shows that family members who suffer the loss of a loved one through suicide often experience self-blame and shame, and that this limits their grieving process. It can also lock them into stigmatized positions and the notion that either somebody or a dysfunctional family is to blame for the suicide.

  Aim: This article investigates from a narrative perspective how a theater play might counteract the stigma that surrounds suicide bereavement by contributing destigmatizing understandings of suicide.

  Methods: A theater play was performed in a churchyard theater in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2019. Audience members were asked to write down their free reflections on a form distributed at the theater. In particular, they were asked to assess whether they found the play related to their own lives and, if so, how; and to describe what they had learned. Their written reflections [N = 41] were analyzed from a narrative methodological perspective to investigate their responses to the play. Three categories of audience member were identified from their responses: people with their own suicide bereavement experiences; people with similar but different experiences of stigmatized trauma; and people who did not report any experiences of suicide or stigmatized trauma.

  Results: The suicide-bereaved generally reported familiarity with the thematic performed, in particular the “why question,” the blame and shame responses and the silenced family communication. Most of these aspects were also shared by those affected by other types of stigmatized trauma. Respondents from all categories emphasized how they had learned that suicide is a desperate rather than a deliberated act, caused by overwhelming emotional pain or depression. Ultimately, suicide was perceived as an involuntary death caused by complex interacting factors linked to both inner vulnerabilities and stressful life events, for which no one was to blame.

  Conclusion: The results show that research-based theater isa time-limited and cost-effective method of introducing alternative meanings and identities to both individual mourners and the broader cultural context from which stigma originates, and how it can have destigmatizing effects on a stigmatized trauma such as suicide bereavement.

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