• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.304-316
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to analyze the records of 8 people with mental disabilities who had participated in Research and Mutual Help of Bethel's House and to investigate the occurrence of mental crisis and process of self-help by using the grounded theory method. As a result of axial coding, the central phenomenon of crisis experience of the people with mental disabilities was derived as 'being overwhelmed by hardships in the life related to their symptoms'. In the self-help process of overcoming the crisis, Action-interaction strategies were derived as 'talking about the hardships', 'researching and practicing with peers', 'participating in various groups', etc. through the intervening conditions such as 'understanding patterns and meanings of hardships led by the person' and 'finding ways to overcome the hardships with the person'. These strategies were analyzed as a process in which the person with mental disabilities leads his/her life reassuming control over his/her crisis. The result of this study shows that it is necessary to expand the political crisis concept in the support system for the mental crisis of people with mental disabilities, and the self-help approach in which the persons participate autonomously can be useful.