%0 Journal Article
%T Building a case for accessing service provision in child and adolescent mental health assessments
%A Jessica Nina Lester
%A Michelle O¡¯Reilly
%A Nikki Kiyimba
%J Discourse Studies
%@ 1461-7080
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1461445619842735
%X In everyday conversations, people put forward versions of events and provide supporting evidence to build a credible case. In environments where there are potentially competing versions, case-building may take a more systematic format. Specifically, we conducted a rhetorical analysis to consider how in child mental health settings, families work to present a credible ¡®doctorable¡¯ reason for attendance. Data consisted of video-recordings of 28 families undergoing mental health assessments. Our findings point to eight rhetorical devices utilised in this environment to build a case. The devices functioned rhetorically to add credibility and authenticate the case being built, which was relevant as the only resource available to families claiming the presence of a mental health difficulty in the child was their spoken words. In other words, the ¡®problem¡¯ was something constructed through talk and therefore the kinds of resources used were seminal in decision-making
%K Adolescents
%K case-building
%K children
%K conversation analysis
%K mental health
%K rhetoric
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461445619842735