Consumers/service users: is nursing listening?

This article synthesizes some consumer literature and highlights the fact that many of their priorities fall outside the purview of contemporary mainstream psychiatry. Given that there is insufficient integration of consumer information into mental health nursing literature, the author overviews biopsychiatry's emphases and omissions for clues to the marginalization of consumer-based concerns. As nursing traditionally focuses on activities of daily living impeded by illness or disability (unlike psychiatry), the article argues that we have a responsibility to assist consumers manage life difficulties arising from structured constraints such as unemployment, poverty, insecure accommodation, and stigma.