[The life world of adolescents with mental health problems]

Adolescents are currently being exposed more and more to the expectations of parents, educators, healthworker/helpers and policy makers to meet the demands of society and conform with it. The perception arises that adults are not able to let the adolescent take responsibility for the HOW of his own life story, despite of all the expectations and demands. Under the influence of the postmodern approach to science and the narrative therapy it appears that each person is an expert of his own life and that each person is responsible for the how and the writing and rewriting of his own life story. This means that even the adolescent with mental health problems is busy with the writing and rewriting of his life story till even unpleasant incidents and experiences can get new meaning. This demands from the adolescent with mental health problems to be actively involved with his treatment programme while the therapist is a participative observer of the therapeutic events. A one sided approach where the therapist's objectives and ideals for the adolescent with mental health problems make the difference to the treatment is outdated. A alternative approach is suggested where the adolescent with mental health problems becomes co-author of his own life story and his treatment programme. In this research the researcher aimed to explore and describe the HOW of the lifeworld of the adolescent with mental health problems. The utilization of the case-study format as research method enabled a in depth, holistic description of the lifeworld of the adolescent with mental health problems. The implementation of the strategies to ensure trustworthiness, as described by Guba were applied to ensure the validity and reliability of this study. Focus were especially placed on the application of the strategy of cross validation. This implies that multiple data-collection sources, different experts, theories and respondents were utilized in the exploration of the lifeworld of the adolescent with mental health problems before this lifeworld was describe in depth. The researcher makes a few conclusions and based on this made recommendations for application in practice, education and research.