Dave Holmes

Background: Infanticide, defined as the killing of a child under 1 year of age by their mother, is a rare and complex offence. In Canada and many other jurisdictions, infanticide is a gender-specific legal offence that can only be committed by women. The phenomenon is shaped by strongly gendered social and legal attitudes that influence perceptions of women convicted of infanticide. Aim: To examine forensic psychiatric nurses’ perspectives on the moral subjectivities of mothers convicted of infanticide. Methods: A critical discourse analysis, informed by feminist and poststructuralist theory, was conducted. Five forensic psychiatric nurses who had provided care to mothers convicted of infanticide were interviewed. Interview data were analyzed to explore the discursive practices through which nurses constructed patients’ moral subjectivities. Results: Two overarching observations emerged. First, participants assessed patients’ morality through discourses linking moral worth to mental health or illness and to perceptions of maternal willfulness. Second, nurses conditioned patients’ moral identities on their behavior while in care. Patients’ expressions of grief were interpreted according to normative expectations regarding the performance of remorse, shaping nurses’ evaluations of their character and the care they received. Discussion: Findings suggest that forensic psychiatric nurses’ understandings of women convicted of infanticide are informed by gendered assumptions about morality, motherhood, and emotional expression. These assumptions influence how patients’ actions and emotions are interpreted within forensic psychiatric settings. This study highlights the importance of examining the moral and gendered frameworks that may shape nursing practice and patient care in forensic mental health contexts.

Infanticide refers to the killing of a child under one year of age by their mother (Dawson, 2015; Kramar, 2005; Kramar & Watson, 2008; Spinelli, 2019). In Canada and many other jurisdictions, this ...

Infanticide is defined as the killing of a child under 1 year of age by their mother. In Canada and many other jurisdictions, infanticide is a legal offense that can be committed only by women. Although it is a rare and complex phenomenon, social and legal attitudes toward women convicted of infanticide are strongly gendered. This gendered legal construction has generated considerable debate regarding whether such laws acknowledge or obscure the complex social realities of motherhood; whether they privilege or disadvantage women within the criminal justice system; and whether they facilitate access to appropriate mental health care for women experiencing psychological distress. In this study, a qualitative critical discourse analysis (CDA), informed by feminist and poststructuralist theory, was conducted to examine nurses' social representations of women convicted of infanticide. More specifically, this empirical investigation explored the social factors shaping forensic psychiatric nursing practices toward mothers convicted of infanticide. Five forensic psychiatric nurses who had provided care to women convicted of infanticide were interviewed as part of this qualitative research. We organized our analysis of the interviews into three key findings: (1) Participants constructed specific, medicalized discourses of pathology and responsibility around the women in their care; (2) Threaded into these discourses of willfulness was a stigmatizing figuration of women convicted of infanticide as “the disordered mother”; and (3) Participants worked to manage the stigma and abjection they felt toward their patients through two particular orientations to care: objectivity and context‐sensitivity. The findings highlight the need, across legal, media, public, and medical domains, for narratives that enable women to reclaim agency from the gendered, classed, and medicalized stories that often define them. A context‐sensitive orientation to care may represent one possible avenue for challenging and dismantling the construction of the “disordered infanticidal mother” within forensic psychiatric institutions.

The number of individuals declared not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder is increasing in Canada. The supervision of these individuals—balancing the imperatives of public safety with philosophies of care—can create significant ethical dilemmas for psychiatric nurses. This article examines the intersection of mental health and the justice system, drawing on the accounts of nurses and service users admitted to psychiatric units. Using grounded theory, the study seeks to deepen understanding of the impact of judiciarization, particularly its influence on therapeutic relationships and the perceived quality of care. Special attention is given to the role of the Mental Health Review Board (MHRB) in monitoring individuals found NCRMD. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Deleuze's notion of societies of control, the analysis of interview data reveals three central categories: (1) the process of involuntary (re)admission; (2) the complexities of the care partnership; and (3) ethical tensions and prejudice. The experiences of users are explored through the lenses of coercive practices, disciplinary structures, and varied forms of social control in the context of MHRB supervision. Psychiatric nurses' narratives point to challenges related to power imbalances, conflicts of professional allegiance, and ambivalence in care perspectives—highlighting the need for ongoing ethical reflection and systemic change in the management of NCR patients.

A multitude of factors shape the labor conditions of men engaged in digitally facilitated sex work. To examine these labor conditions, we conducted a scoping review of research conducted with men about their use of internet technologies to facilitate in-person sex work and/or provide sexual services online through digital platforms. We retrieved 72 papers and book chapters published between 1990 and 2024. We summarize some descriptive characteristics and organize the findings according to six working conditions: entry into sex work, advertising and marketing, screening and communications, pay, occupational health and safety, and resources and support. We found primarily qualitative studies examining a variety of sex work sectors and contexts, including a growing body of work about webcamming and porn production. Articles focused on motivations, the role of internet platforms in shaping sex worker practice and identities, marketing and safety strategies, and sexual and community health. Literature increasingly frames sex work in terms of labor and addresses the social, legal, technological, and structural forces that shape sex work conditions. By organizing the findings of existing studies according to labor outcomes and implications, this review aims to further support and facilitate the adoption of a workers' rights perspective within sex work research.

A growing body of literature highlights the involvement of nurses in the application of involuntary commitment and treatments in psychiatry. The violence underlying these coercive practices is often discussed, as they infringe on human rights and have negative effects on both patients and healthcare staff. The current state of knowledge on this subject, however, fails to inform us of what characterizes and influences these practices in psychiatric nursing. A situational analysis was conducted to gain a better understanding of this issue. This qualitative research aims to explore the characteristics of nursing care during involuntary commitment and treatments. In all, 10 nurses ( n = 10) and 11 patients ( n = 11) participated in semi-structured interviews and completed a sociodemographic questionnaire. Data analysis followed a grounded theory approach, involving a process of coding, conceptualizing, categorizing, constant comparison, and relational mapping, accompanied by analytical memos. Four conceptual categories emerged from data analysis: (1) Psychiatry as a waiting room, (2) nurses as subordinates, (3) nothing else but medication, and (4) resisting undignifying care. The results suggest that clinical issues surrounding involuntary commitment and treatments can be explained by how care is conceived. The psychiatric nursing practice seems to be limited to the application of coercive power, such as forced administration of medication. The distress potentially induced by involuntary commitment and treatments in patients comes to be ignored in favor of compliance with the legal procedures. The results describe a situation where patients felt abandoned to those procedures as if refusing to be hospitalized or treated were incompatible with any other form of care. Several participants also report having suffered negative consequences following one or more coerced psychiatric episodes. For them, refusal of care therefore seems to be associated with a resistance against the current violence of biomedical psychiatry, rather than a refusal to obtain help and support.

The 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs tracks the fictional pursuit of an American serial killer by a Federal Bureau of Investigation trainee, via the assistance of another incarcerated serial killer. It features psychologically disturbing themes, such as corpses, the mutilation of skin and monstrous persons. Incidentally, these are all themes regularly encountered by nurses in their day‐to‐day practices, including forensic mental health nurses. Despite regular encounters with these themes and phenomena, nurses continue to find them disturbing and troubling, but, at the same time, clinically fascinating. This paper will mobilize Kristeva's poststructuralist, psychoanalytic concept of abjection to relate the encounters in The Silence of the Lambs to those of nurses, to reconceptualize feelings of both disgust and fascination and to consider how vulnerability may benefit nursing practice. Of particular relevance are the breakdown of skin encountered in nursing practice, encounters with corpses and work with forensic patients considered monstrous. The film provides opportunity for nurses to conceptualize abjection in their own practice and to consider how a reconceptualization of boundaries and vulnerability may prove productive.

Within the context of neoliberal healthcare, nurses and other health professionals face working conditions that leave them perpetually feeling inadequate, as though they are not enough. They are consistently expected to achieve more with less resources. In such an environment, mere professionalism proves wholly insufficient, enforcing norms of altruism and kindness. Professionals must transcend this disciplinary tool and embody a ‘more‐than‐professional’ approach. This study, informed by critical posthumanism, employs three mythical archetypes—the Medusa, the Witch and the Siren—to illuminate potential avenues for resistance against prevailing trends in healthcare. Drawing on the perspectives of Hélène Cixous, Silvia Federici and Jacques Rancière, we introduce a process of resistance for healthcare professionals pushing back against the challenges of crumbling healthcare systems. Cixous' feminist reimagining of Medusa symbolizes intensified embodied sensory experiences, emphasizing the power of irony, laughter and writing in highlighting the daily struggles faced by healthcare workers. Federici's depiction of the Witch exposes clandestine alliances among healthcare workers and patients, akin to a pact with the devil, countering the individualistic, alienating approach to care provision and resisting neoliberal pressures. The Witch archetype embodies resistance grounded in creativity against the commodification of public healthcare. Finally, Rancière's ‘politics of the Siren' offers a strategy for disrupting entrenched hierarchies from the underworld. Like Sirens, healthcare workers and patients can subversively transform their silence into songs of resistance, simultaneously operating from beneath the surface of accountability measures. Our intention is to showcase the emergence of posthuman ‘professionals’ who adapt by forging new modes of social relations in response to neoliberal constraints, straying from conventional, apolitical notions of ‘professionalism’. Drawing lessons from mythical figures of resistance offers a fresh understanding of subversion as a catalyst for social and political transformation within the healthcare sector.

Nurses working in outreach capacities frequently encounter disaffiliated or ‘hard to reach’ populations, such as those experiencing homelessness, those who use substances, and those with mental health concerns. Despite best efforts, nurses regularly fail to find meaningful engagement with these populations. Mobilizing the work of Deleuze and Guattari, this paper will critically examine conventional outreach nursing practices as rooted in the royal science of psychiatry, which many ‘survivors’ of psychiatric interventions reject. The field of Mad Studies offers an understanding of patient resistance to outreach nursing interventions. Delueze and Guattari's concepts of packs and sorcerers provide a framework to envision alternative nursing practices as a form of resistance and creativity, where new alliances may be formed outside the coercive confines of traditional practices. In response to patient resistance, outreach nurses themselves must assemble packs and engage in acts of sorcery.