Causation, historiographic approaches and the investigation of serious adverse incidents in mental health settings

Bibliographic Data

ID4217910
AuthorsSahil Bhandari (Health Education England North West & Cheshire and Wirral Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, UK), Øyvind Thomassen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology & St Olavs Hospital, Norway), Robert Nathan (0000-0003-2780-6170, University of Chester, University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, UK, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume27
Issue6
Pages1019-1032
Publication date2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHealth An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/13634593221094703
PMID35502654
OpenAlexW4225377258
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited24

To improve the safety of healthcare systems, it is necessary to understand harm-related events that occur in these systems. In mental health services, particular attention is paid to harm arising from the actions of patients against themselves or others. The primary intention of examining these adverse events is to inform changes to care provision so as to reduce the likelihood of the recurrence of such events. The predominant approach to investigating adverse incidents has relied on the cause-and-effect conceptualisation of past events. Whilst the merits of approaches which are reliant on cause-and-effect narratives have been questioned, alternatives models to explain adverse incidents in health settings have not been theoretically or empirically tested. This novel article (i) examines the notion of causation (and the related notion of omission) in the context of explaining adverse events in mental health settings, and (ii) draws on a long-established discipline devoted to the study of how the past is interpreted (namely historiography) to theoretically investigate the innovative application of two historiographical approaches (i.e. counterfactual analysis and historical materialism) to understanding adverse events in mental health settings

Adverse effect · Causation · Counterfactual thinking · Epistemology · Harm · Health care · Historiography · Mental health · Narrative · Political science · Psychiatry · Healthcare Decision-Making and Restraints · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Psychology · Social Psychology

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