Øyvind Johannes Hope

• Hope, Øyvind Johannes; Ness, Ottar; Friesinger, Jan Georg; Topor, Alain Pierre & Bøe, Tore Dag (2026). Wellbeing takes place: Situated recovery in mental health and substance abuse. Wellbeing, Space and Society. 11. doi: 10.1016/j.wss.2026.100445. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Despite growing recognition that wellbeing and recovery are entangled with everyday environments, research in mental health and/or substance use has largely focused on individual experiences or decontextualized indicators, offering limited insights into how social-material conditions of place may enable or constrain recovery processes. This gap calls for empirical studies that explore how wellbeing and recovery are enacted within the contexts of everyday life. This study explores how people with mental health and/or substance use problems engage with everyday places in ways that affect their wellbeing and recovery. Drawing on walking interviews and multi-sited field work conducted in Southern Norway, we analyse how wellbeing and recovery may emerge through situated interactions between people, materials and environments. The analysis identified three key dynamics: 1) in-place attentive responsiveness; where wellbeing and recovery emerge when participants attune and respond to socio-material conditions that a place affords; 2) in-place doing and making, where wellbeing and recovery emerge through tangible engagement in shared practices in a place; and 3) out-of-place disruption by external forces, where imposed agendas undermine place based processes of wellbeing and recovery. Together, these dynamics show how wellbeing and recovery are enacted through ongoing socio-material relations rather than located within individuals. We propose the concept of performative wellbeing to capture this place-based, relational, and materially grounded unfolding of recovery. The findings contribute to the importance of place-sensitive, relationally attuned, and materially enabling service and policy designs.

• Topor, Alain Pierre; Bøe, Tore Dag; Hope, Øyvind Johannes; Ness, Ottar & Friesinger, Jan Georg (2025). The New Institutional Landscape for People with Mental Health Problems. In Boyd, Candice P.; Boyle, Candice P.; Bell, Sarah L.; Högström, Ebba; Evans, Joshua; Paul, Alak & Foley, Ronan (Ed.), Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Routledge. ISSN 9781032385761. p. 430–445. doi: 10.4324/9781003345725. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  De-institutionalisation can be analysed as the closing of total institutions and the creation of new landscapes at the disposition of persons with mental health problems. These landscapes are everybody's landscape, the cities' cultural, social and commercial offerings, and natural places. It is also a new institutional landscape constituted of social and treatment places. Much attention has been given to the ‘landscape of despair' created in neo-liberal societies, characterised by diverse forms of abandonment. Studies have also focused on specific enabling places. However, a place's role in a person's life depends on the presence of other places. In this chapter we describe and analyse the total institutional landscape in a region of Norway, a welfare society. We found a tight network of places, including the reminiscences of total institutions, and of new social and cultural places. Together they build a rich network of potentially enabling places, but also of tight control.

• Hope, Øyvind Johannes; Ness, Ottar; Friesinger, Jan Georg; Topor, Alain Pierre & Bøe, Tore Dag (2023). ‘Living needs a landscape’: A qualitative study about the role of enabling landscapes for people with mental health and substance abuse problems. Health and Place. ISSN 1353-8292. 84, p. 1–8. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2023.103144. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The deinstitutionalization of mental health institutions has enabled service users to live in the community and search for what Duff coins ‘enabling places.’ These places were explored through walking interviews, in which service-users led the way. This analysis revealed features which made places promote liveable lives: places help people explore, places help people stand out, places give people responsibilities, and places dare people. An adverse feature was also identified: places define people by their problems. Overall, we suggest that ‘living needs a landscape’ to capture how a diversity of places form an ‘enabling landscape’. This suggests a shift of focus in research and treatment, from internal to external landscapes.

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• Hope, Øyvind Johannes (2024). Living needs a landscape. Full text in Research Archive
• Hope, Øyvind Johannes (2024). Living needs a landscape. Full text in Research Archive
• Bøe, Tore Dag; Lidbom, Per Arne; Hope, Øyvind Johannes & Winterstø, Wenche (2023). Stepping in and stepping out of dialogue. Full text in Research Archive
• Friesinger, Jan Georg & Hope, Øyvind Johannes (2023). Steders betydning for folkehelse og inkludering - "living needs a landscape". Full text in Research Archive
• Lindvig, Gunnhild Ruud; Kogstad, Ragnfrid Eline; Strømland, Monica; Larsen, Inger Beate; Topor, Alain Pierre & Bøe, Tore Dag [Show all 19 contributors for this article] (2022). Regjeringens utdaterte forståelse av psykisk helse. Full text in Research Archive
• Hope, Øyvind Johannes (2022). These boots are made for walking. Full text in Research Archive

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