The presentation offers a critical exploration of how mental health services, interventions or therapies work as sociocultural entities to produce effects – or ‘outcomes’ – for the individuals who are using them. Based on person-centred ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish service providing early intervention in psychosis I apply the anthropological concept of ‘symbolic healing’ to highlight four aspects of therapeutic processes. These detail the shared cultural context, the establishment of a therapeutic relationship, the attachment of the patient’s situation to key notions within the cultural context, and, finally, the transformation of the patient’s experiences and self-perception. The presentation argues for the value of examining these sociocultural processes, and the individual’s active involvement in their negotiation, to start unpacking the ‘black box’ of health interventions.

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