Psychiatric personnel, risk management and the new institutionalism

This article reports the findings of a series of ethnographic research interviews conducted with psychiatric personnel in one region of Tasmania between 1995 and 1997. These interviews formed part of a more wide-ranging project examining changes in the regulatory practices of psychiatric personnel in the light of the professional, media and policy discourses that inform them, especially in relation to the impact of social justice reforms spelt out in recent Australian mental health policy. In discussing the nature of psychiatric work the personnel interviewed returned repeatedly to the themes of safety and risk management. The study presents an analysis of discourses deployed around these themes and argues that concerns over safety and risk are central to the emergence of a new institutionalism in acute in-patient psychiatric services.