Space and time in the lives of people with long-standing mental illness: An ethnographic account

Abstract This paper argues that uncommon use of time and space in a closed ward of a mental hospital is strongly related to culture, social dynamics and power relations. Space is differentiated and continuously re‐embodied through awareness of and participation in events, interaction and forces. The time perspective is centred on patterns of improvement and regression of the illness. Past and future form an indissoluble part of these patterns. Through ethnographic material, gathered during anthropological fieldwork in the ward, this paper demonstrates that time and space form a complex web and are enmeshed with aspects of social life in and outside the ward, so that it is problematic to conceive whether uncommon use of both can be ascribed to mental illness or to social situations.