Concluding thoughts

Abstract

This final chapter of the book offers a summary of the chapters, drawing together key ideas. The chapter asks that when considering the analytical contributions of the collection of writing that readers "keep the institution in view" (McCoy in Institutional ethnography as practice, AltaMira, 2006) by "seeing" and challenging how ideology, structures, and histories shape psychiatric chart documentation and the ways in which ideology, structures, and histories are inscribed across time and space. The chapter concludes by offering suggested tactics for approaching psychiatric documentation in ways that avoid collapsing our attention onto what those designated as patients "do" and "are," and instead focusing on the ways in which the institutional structures and relations that surround each document can be usefully interrogated.