Psychiatry and citizenship: the Liverpool black mental health service users' perspective

This study investigates the appropriateness of statutory psychiatric services for the Black community in Liverpool by appraising the services through the views of Black British, Black African, and Black Caribbean service users residing in Liverpool. Semi-structured and unstructured interviews, which characterize methodological approaches used to harness and deploy services users' views to generate involvement in service decisions at local level, are utilized and analyzed by thematic content analytical procedures described in Burnard (1991), and demonstrated by Evans (1995). Interview transcripts are individually studied, manipulated, and aggregated to generate the main themes discussed during this process. The findings are discussed in the presentation of the data as supporting or disconfirming evidence of the researcher's understanding of the anomalies in the characteristics of psychiatric services in cross-cultural settings. The study shows that structures already exist in the Black Community for mental health service providers to action user involvement, a contemporary policy initiative in the British National Health Service (DoH 1997). This study demonstrates the process.