The Tidal Model: psychiatric colonization, recovery and the paradigm shift in mental health care

Psychiatric research and practice involves the colonization of the personal experience of problems of human living. From a Western perspective, this process shares many similarities with the subjugation of women, people of colour and people embracing non-Christian faiths and cultures. The Tidal Model is a mental health recovery and reclamation model, developed to provide the framework for discrete alternatives to the colonizing approach of mainstream psychiatric practice. The Model asserts the intrinsic value of personal experience and the centrality of narrative in the development of contextually bound, personally appropriate, mental health care. This paper summarizes the features of the Model, which attempt to address the foci of the more significant critiques of psychiatric practice (and psychiatric nursing), against a background sketch of psychiatric colonization.