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Empowerment and the psychiatric consumer/ex-patient movement in the United States: Contradictions, crisis and change

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  • McLean, Athena

Abstract

A political movement in the United States by consumers and ex-patients of psychiatry has challenged the assumptions and negative consequences of traditional mental health practice and its control by professionals. In recent years, the movement has succeeded in gaining support to produce alternative programs based on a philosophy of 'consumer empowerment' and run entirely by consumers and ex-patients. In this article, I present results from an ethnographic study of one such alternative and I attempt to explain the discrepancy between the center's philosophy of empowerment and its actual practices. Utilizing this data, the consumer literature, and interviews with consumer leaders nationwide, I explain this situation in terms of conceptual problems with the terms 'empowerment' and 'consumer empowerment', local structural conditions under which the center operated, and the larger situation of the psychiatric consumer/ex-patient movement in the United States today. The case study represents a crisis in the consumer movement today, in which rapid growth of alternatives has been accompanied by a social amnesia of the emancipatory vision that originally spawned the movement.

Suggested Citation

  • McLean, Athena, 1995. "Empowerment and the psychiatric consumer/ex-patient movement in the United States: Contradictions, crisis and change," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 1053-1071, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:40:y:1995:i:8:p:1053-1071
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    Cited by:

    1. Finlay, Susanna & Sandall, Jane, 2009. ""Someone's rooting for you": Continuity, advocacy and street-level bureaucracy in UK maternal healthcare," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 1228-1235, October.
    2. Adams, Wallis E., 2020. "Unintended consequences of institutionalizing peer support work in mental healthcare," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    3. Speed, Ewen, 2006. "Patients, consumers and survivors: A case study of mental health service user discourses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 28-38, January.
    4. Kimiko Tanaka & Larry Davidson & Thomas J Craig, 2018. "Sense of clubhouse community belonging and empowerment," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 64(3), pages 276-285, May.

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