Psychiatric power: A personal view

One of the most important questions facing psychiatry today concerns its relationship to the emerging international service user movement. I believe that this movement presents not only the greatest challenge to psychiatry, but also the greatest opportunity. As it becomes more organised and influential this movement is starting to play a major role in shaping the sort of questions that are being asked about mental health services and their priorities. Yet there is limited reflection in our profession about how we, as doctors, might engage positively with it. It seems that while we are comfortable working with individuals and organisations who accept the medical framing of mental problems, we are less willing to contemplate working with critical service users. These are people who reject the medical model because they feel harmed by a system that describes their problems using the language of psychopathology. If we are serious about having an inclusive debate on mental health we will have to overcome this impasse. We need to entertain the idea that people who reject the medical framing of their problems are nevertheless legitimate stakeholders. It is time that we learned how to talk to them and to listen to their ideas. The user movement, with its substantial critical component, is not going to go away. One of the most important elements of the relationship between psychiatric services and the people who use them is the reality of psychiatric power. Many critical service users accept that legally sanctioned interventions may be necessary when individuals lose capacity to care for themselves and perhaps put themselves or others at risk. However they do not accept the fact that the Mental Health Act in Ireland gives sole authority to doctors to take decisions on such interventions without any obligation to consult other interested parties.