Phenomenology has become widely used and accepted within nursing including psychiatric nursing as a research methodology for examining phenomena(human experience) from the subject´s perspective. Yet, psychiatric nurse researchers have not fully examined the appropriateness of using the phenomenological method with patients with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This examination is critical because cognitive function, which is the source of subjects´ descriptions of experience, is often considered to be distorted, impaired, and changing over time in persons with a serious mental illness. In this paper, the author discusses the issues associated with using phenomenology as a research method to study persons with a serious mental illness. The major concepts of Husserl are examined in relation to the credibility and confirmability of the subjects´ descriptions of their experiences.
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