Hemvårdspersonalens handlingsutrymme vid psykisk ohälsa: En kvalitativ studie om arbetet med psykisk ohälsa bland äldre sett ur hemvårdspersonalens perspektiv

Sammanfattning: In times of demographic changes where people are getting older, there is a large group of elderly suffering from depression and other mental illness. We have therefore found it relevant to examine how the mental health issue among this population is identified by care workers. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate how care workers recognized and worked with mental illness among elderly and investi-gate their working conditions with this issue. The empirical data which was used to obtain our results consists of seven semi-structured interviews with six assistant nurs-es and a branch head conducted in one municipality in Sweden. To analyze our mate-rial we have used the analytical concept discretion to illustrate the care workers expe-riences working with this matter. Our result indicates that the care workers identify some mental illness among the elderly but the identification is limited to some of its aspects as depression and dementia. The recognition is affected by the care workers relation to their care recipients, the time given with each recipients and their main focus on the somatic care. It also appears that collaboration among care workers and other professions within and outside the organization implicate the work by acting both as a prerequisite and as a limitation. Furthermore the study suggests that there is some lack of knowledge of mental illness among the care workers, which effects their recognition of and work with mental illness among the elderly.