Illness,Crisis & Loss

“It's not waiting to be found, not missing, not lost or anything like that—just not wanting to be found for a while” [Formerly missing woman]. When an adult goes missing, there is often an underlying reason; save for a small number of misunderstandings, missing incidents tend to be indicative of difficulties in the missing person's life. Mental health is inextricably linked with missing; as many as 80% of missing people are thought to have a mental health issue (Holmes, 2014b). Using data collected by the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Geographies of Missing People project, this article explores this link, through secondary analysis of interviews with returned missing adults and with police officers, to shine a light on the key themes that emerged. Furthermore, the article argues that the response to returning missing adults in the United Kingdom is inadequate, meaning that potentially vulnerable adults are left without the assessment and support they need to maintain their mental well-being and to prevent future missing incidents. This article contributes to existing knowledge about the links between mental health and missing and makes a number of suggestions for improvements in cross-sector policy and practice.

This article draws on insights from doctoral research into deaths in psychiatric detention in England and Wales. As the article demonstrates, the response to patients in death has often been reflective of the response to them in life, both historically and contemporarily. Furthermore, the families and friends of patients and those who raised concerns have also been treated in a similar manner to patients themselves. Some of the key areas explored in the article are the exercise of power over patients and their advocates by the medical profession and other official bodies, including the oppression, categorization, and dismissal that they have faced. The contestations and challenges of this power will also be explored and how dominant voices have been challenged through the emergence of alternative truths. Post-death procedures will also be critically examined, primarily the inquest and investigation processes, with a focus on issues surrounding the secrecy and lack of accountability apparent.

People who endure mental and emotional distress experience a plethora of negative experiences beyond the effects of the symptoms themselves. For centuries, the designation of labels of difference; that is, those which transgress approved social norms have affected the lived experiences of those individuals, and more widely in structuring responses, engagements with, and attitudes between society and the individual. Understanding the creation of tainted identities, particularly of those with experience of mental and emotional distress, has been well rehearsed in the sociological literature of the second half of the 20th century. Central to much of this analysis has been to understand the nature of the manufacture of deviant identities, how they are sustained, and the impact of these identities on those who experience them. This article explores the experience of those with mental and emotional distress as a victim of crime. The interconnectedness of matters of identity created though the application of a diagnosis of illness or disorder is addressed as is the crisis of criminal victimization. This is achieved via an exploration of contemporary concerns surrounding victims of crime with experience of mental and emotional distress, including the (further) loss of voice and agency when interfacing with agencies of the state.

The purpose of this article is to illustrate prescient issues relating to current and ex-military communities in the United Kingdom who have featured heavily within the policy arena over the past decade in relation to several key areas of importance. It will be illustrated how this population becomes visible within the public imagination (via military losses), how discourses relating to the harms they experience are structured and articulated within political and policy domains (particularly in relation to mental health) via “state talk” (qua Sim), and what the potential social consequences are for politically rendering an unproblematized populist view of current and ex-military communities (i.e., pending crises). This argument is made with the express intention of reengaging critical recognition of the distancing of the military institution from the physical and psychological vulnerability of those who have participated in war and military environments. This is an argument returned to pertinence from the recent publication of the Chilcot Inquiry into British involvement in the Iraq war.