Interpreting the 'hidden social geographies' of mental health: ethnographies of inclusion and exclusion in semi-institutional places.

This paper critically evaluates, through use of covert ethnographic materials, an inner-city drop-in as a semi-institutional place where the identities of people with mental health problems are influenced by social processes of inclusion and exclusion. It is demonstrated, through an in-depth interpretative approach, that it is possible to understand more about the micro-geographies which make up deinstitutionalized landscapes, and about the social relations which characterise these. Key to this paper are findings which indicate that people with mental health problems cannot be understood as a straightforwardly homogeneous 'excluded' grouping, and that mainstream processes of boundary maintenance are in operation among these constructed 'others'.