In my last post, I talked about the autoethnography I am preparing for publication. The autoethnography describes a series of stigmatizing events that occurred to me and other patients FROM other patients, because me (and my group) had psychosis, and the other group who were stigmatizing us had mood or substance use disorders, but not psychosis.
In preparing the manuscript, I sent the paper to a trusted friend, and part of his feedback was, “you were psychotic when these things happened. Why should I believe you?” REALLY good question.How do we talk about psychosis in autoethnographies, while being authentic but also maintaining scientific rigor and methodological excellence? Yes, I can say I only selected journal entries that had no psychosis in it, and I had my selections validated by a former patient (who was also no longer psychotic when he read it), but there is still a credibility issue. I honestly don’t know how to get around this credibility issue, and I’m interested to hear what the reviewers say. Do they believe me? Is science written by someone with psychosis science?