Survival and its discontents: the case of British psychiatry

Sub-divisions of labour in health settings are common and medical dominance and encroachment from competitors are well known. This article considers this general picture but in specific relation to mental health work in Britain and its particular features of recent contestation. British psychiatric orthodoxy has faced challenges to its legitimacy for over a century. However, since the 1980s, in the wake of de-institutionalisation and a new shared service commitment to 'recovery', these challenges have taken new shape. They are explored by considering: the current ambit of mental health care; the sub-division of labour in specialist mental services; recent governmental expectations of the mental health workforce; and the contested legacy of theory and practice in mental health work. The conclusion is that the profession is not under immediate threat of collapse but that its fate may now rest on whether a biomedical or a biopsychosocial model of practice predominates in routine service delivery.