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Tag: Mental Health

Holladay, D. (2017). Classified conversations: psychiatry and tactical technical communication in online spaces. Technical Communication Quarterly, 26(1), (pp. 8–24). https://doi-org.ezproxy.csupueblo.edu/10.1080/10572252.2016.1257744

In Drew Holladay (2017) article, “Classified Conversations: Psychiatry and Tactical Technical Communication in Online Spaces” he examined the “practices of participants in online mental health discussion forums conversations as they interpret technical documents” (p. 8). Holladay investigated the tactical technical communication used in online mental health forums, the current medical discourse used to diagnose and document mental health, the ethical and humanistic elements at stake, one discussion board focused on PTSD and the other two boards focused on Autism spectrum conditions, the privacy and rights in online spaces, the tactical technical communication used to create parallel social roles, the reliance on secondary sources for information, the reclamation of diagnosed terms to dictate identity, the doubt in medical professionals and skepticism about prescribed medications, and including personal experiences from the patient into medical documents to create a more diversified understanding. Holladay’s purpose was to propose a direct reform of diagnostic language because “such changes to technical documents would afford a place for the disparate, granular accounts of people receiving mental health care in the official record and, perhaps, facilitate the legitimation of their perspectives in local and institutional contexts” (p. 22). Holladay’s intended audience was medical professionals, individuals diagnosed with a mental disorder, and instructors of technical communication seeking inclusive knowledge about how mental disorders should be understood and how specialized knowledge should be made more accessible for everyone and not used as an exclusionary tool. Holladay approached his research by obtaining sufficient Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, giving his participants a voice without explicitly criticizing any one culprit, and skillfully avoiding a bias by simply showing the data and offering a possible solution to the obvious miscommunication.  

maryatteberry Uncategorized Leave a comment March 12, 2019 1 Minute
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