Introduction: The Importance of Critical Approaches to Mental Health and Illness (original) (raw)
Related papers
Critical psychiatry in practice
Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 2004
The ideas of critical psychiatry are influencing a growing number of psychiatrists in Britain and elsewhere. In this article we examine the origins and development of critical psychiatry over the past 25 years, through the work of philosophers such as Foucault and of critical social theorists such as Ingleby, Miller and Rose. We outline the important differences between critical psychiatry and antipsychiatry. Finally, we examine the current status of critical psychiatry, and what is called postpsychiatry. We regard both as an attempt by practising psychiatrists to engage with service users' concerns about psychiatry, with government policies that stress democracy, citizenship and the importance of social and cultural contexts in health care, and with what might broadly be described as postmodernism.
Critical psychiatry: a brief overview
BJPsych Advances
SUMMARYCritical psychiatry has often been confused with what is widely known as ‘anti-psychiatry’. In this article the distinction is clarified and the particular contribution critical psychiatry makes is outlined. That contribution is constructive criticism: of the relationship between medicine and mental health practice, of the way drug and psychotherapeutic treatments for mental health difficulties might be better understood. These have implications for everyday clinical practice and there is much to be gained by openly embracing the controversies critical psychiatry highlights.LEARNING OBJECTIVES•Understand the origins of critical psychiatry and recognise some of the difficulties that arise from identifying psychiatry with medicine•Appreciate the differences between disease-centred and drug-centred approaches to prescribing psychiatric medication•Become aware of implications that arise from psychotherapeutic outcomes researchDECLARATION OF INTERESTSH. M. and J. M. are co-chairs ...
Towards critical social work practice in mental health
Journal of progressive human services, 2003
Progressive social work perspectives that draw on both critical theories and postmodern thought, provide highly relevant and appropriate frameworks to inform social work practice in the mental health field. Despite this, the literature overviewed indicates that the majority of social work practice conducted in mental health settings reflects an uncritical embrace of the medical model of psychiatric illness, and therefore largely neglects social work approaches which utilize critical principles. The following article explores the possibilities for applying a critical model of social work practice to the mental health field, and argues the necessity for social workers to actively engage with critical practice, even in medically dominated settings, to effectively work towards the espoused social justice ethics and mission of the social work profession.
Watson, N. and Vehmas, S. (Eds) The Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, 2nd Ed. Routledge: London., 2020
Social understandings of mental distress have held persistent tensions with concepts used in disability studies. One means to advance stronger conceptual alliance is through critical realism. This chapter demonstrates how the application of critical realist meta-theory enables us to deepen and broaden our level of explanation when conducting empirical research with people with mental distress. In the process, the chapter shows how critical realism offers a normative bridge between social understandings of mental distress and disability studies. The chapter first describes three ‘waves’ of social research about mental distress, all of which are responses to the dominant biomedical model. It has a particular focus on survivor perspectives. The chapter then describes a fourth, emergent contemporary critical realist wave. It goes on to use the example of a recent study that uses the Capabilities Approach, a framework compatible with previous waves of social research on mental distress, to explore lived experience. The chapter shows that while the study took the analysis to a considerable depth of understanding, engaging critical realism enabled less reductionism and in particular offered a wider and deeper analysis of cause. The chapter concludes with speculations on the potential for critical realism to boundary-span social research in disability and social perspectives on mental distress.
Education for critical practice in mental health
This paper discusses an approach to mental health education that aims to prepare students to become critical practitioners with a vision and skills to understand human distress in life contexts. This approach questions traditional knowledge-formation in mental health as it is not focused on psychiatric diagnoses as a tool to learn about ‘mental illnesses’. It also involves rethinking issues of power, language and identity by encouraging students to question what is often experienced as an oppressive, coercive mental health system and by putting the voice of service-users/survivors in the centre of practice. Such an education often clashes with the ethos and practice of current mental health services which, despite heralding a recovery agenda, remain in their majority medical in focus. Drawing from the author’s experience in mental health education, the paper highlights the potential of educational processes to transform hegemonic practice and the challenges and opportunities contained in this process. Key words: mental health, social work education, critical practice, power, identity
A framework for critical discourse studies on mental health
Ilha do Desterro: A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 2022
In this article, I present a framework for critical discourse studies on mental health. By relying on principles belonging to Critical Discourse Studies
Critical discourse analysis: new possibilities for scientific research in the mental health area
Revista Latino-americana De Enfermagem, 2009
The present study aims to get to know the philosophical, conceptual and methodological aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis, as a theoretical-methodological framework for research in the mental health area. Initially, the study presents a reflection on psychiatric discourse in history and at present, with the goal of introducing concepts and presuppositions that would guide the analysis of discursive processes. Discussions are presented about the historical milestones of Critical Discourse Analysis as an analytical framework in social sciences. Finally, the study presents its conceptual and methodological applications to research in the mental health area.
Critical psychiatry: an embarrassing hangover from the 1970s?
BJPsych Bulletin
Summary Critical psychiatry is associated with anti-psychiatry and may therefore seem to be an embarrassing hangover from the 1970s. However, its essential position that functional mental illness should not be reduced to brain disease overlaps with historical debates in psychiatry more than is commonly appreciated. Three examples of non-reductive approaches, like critical psychiatry, in the history of psychiatry are considered.