Research areas

Research 

My scholarship is relevant to both the study of mental health and community psychology. 

My research concerns the broader field of mental health and conceptualizes the political-organizational conditions for the often-limited possibilities to provide care and cross-sectoral collaboration and care. This is applicable to the understanding of the nature of community mental health care and community psychology and development the conditions under which it is provided in the frontline.

My research spana from a more clearly situated health research profile towards becoming strongly aligned with social science perspectives and collectivist research approaches to community psychology, mental health and/or social psychiatric research. My work contributes to social theory and anthropological and qualitative methodologies that are oriented towards considering the structural, organizational and/or cultural conditioning of mental health care service provision and families’ and individuals’ experiences of mental health and mental distress.

My work builds on data from different research projects (see cv). The studies build on qualitative interviews, focus groups, ethnographic field observations (field notes, correspondences,informal conversation, records of temporal and physical structures), policiesand political guidelines, medical records, ethnographic artefacts (textbooks, pictures,symbols) and reviews (metasynthesis and scoping). My publications mirror my interests in welfare sociology, institutional analysis,gender, power, subjectivity, narrative analysis and phenomenology etc.

My work in the field Recovery and PPI research initially focused on individual caregivers’ experiences up until the end of my PhD. My more recent studies consider situated and social psychiatric understandings of family life with mental health issues and drug problems and how the experiential dimensions of users’ or patients’ recovery, subjectivities, and challenging roles are shaped by broader social circumstances such as institutionalized relationships, discourses, and/or gender.

The developments in my studies on the organization of mental health and drug treatment covers a variety of research issues on gender (Oute et al., 2019), professionalism and ethics (see Glasdam & Oute, 2019; Oute, 2018) and value-conflict management (see Nygaard et al., 2018; Oute & Rudge, 2019).

My work in the field of the politics of mental health began a decade ago (see Oute & Ringer, 2014) and consistently shows how politics (i.e. ideologies or value-laden ideas) are embedded in and shape the basic models, care technologies and patient-carer relations across mental health. My publications mirror a broad scope of research outputs and the publications mirror my theoretical and methodological competences in theory of science, the history of psychology and mental health, social psychology and social psychiatric theories and a broad range of qualitative methods.

Brief CV: Academic positions

-2024-26  Professor (Full) of mental health and addiction care, Dept. of Health, Social and Welfare Studies, University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), external position (10%)

- 2024-26 Associate Professor in Mental Health and Nursing, Dept. People & Technology, RUC

-2019-2024 AProfessor (full) and Associate Professor of mental health and addiction care (Professor i Psykisk helsearbeid) (100%), Dept. of Health, Social and Welfare Studies, University of South-Eastern Norway (USN)

-2020-2026 Honorary Research Fellow, School of Health and Social Care, University of Essex

- 2017 Guest researcher (Aug-December), Program forRecovery and Community Health, Yale Medical School, Yale (CT, US)

-2016-19 Assistant Professor + research assistant, Alcohol and Drug Research in Social Science (100%), Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Dept. of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University

-2011-16 PhD student, Health, Man and Society/ User Perspectives, Dept. Public Health, University of Southern Denmark.

Teaching 

-3 courses in university pedagogy and didactic, supervision and digital teaching methods

-18 years of teaching and supervision experience from clinical and BA-PhD level in public health, nursing, critical health studies, health- and welfare studies, psychology and medical anthropology

- at SDU at teach and supervise in various courses at the psychology bachelors and masters programme, where I am also responsible for the courses in the history and philosophy of science in psychology (semester 1) and qualitative methods (semester 4). In addition I also contribute to various courses in educational/pedagogical psychology, community psychology and social psychology.