Family Social Science Ph.D student Anna Bohlinger will be presented with the AAMFT Master’s Thesis Award at the AAMFT National Conference Friday September 14th in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Her masters thesis was entitled “Metaphorical Language and the Nature of Hope Among Mothers of Children who deal with Mental Illness.” She conducted qualitative interviews with 12 mothers to find out how they conceptualized mental illness when they had children who dealt with it. The mothers often referred to the mental illness in fixed or fluid metaphors – either it was something that was fixed and unchanging (like a “fact of life”) or it was something that was fluid or changed (like an “enemy”). Clinical implications and directions for future research were discussed.