Politics of mental health care

Chat details:

The idea for this chat came out of a presentation ‘Psychopolitics and Mad Studies: voices in the wilderness or road to redemption?’ by Mick McKeown at the recent National Psychiatric Nursing Research (NPNR) Conference held at Nottingham in September.

The presentation noted a revival of interest in the critical work of Peter Sedgwickand his seminal text, Psycho Politics (1982), which has been reissued this year with a view to continued relevance for our times. This also coincides with aburgeoning Mad Studies movement, comprising service users, survivors, practitioners and academics concerned with radical transformations of psychiatry. Taken together, this work poses powerful questions for the mental health workforce, perhaps especially including mental health nurses. Sedgwick, was a Marxist, and highly critical of psychiatry but crucially he was also dismissive of the early, charismatic anti-psychiatrists. His call is for more and better psychiatry. Mad Studies is an eclectic mix of perspectives that arguably privilege identity politics, essentially calling for the dismantling of services as we know them. As such, there are some tensions between the two. Ever the maverick, Sedgwick softens his class politics with a healthy dose of anarchism, opening up the possibility of convergence with Mad Studies activists concerned with enacting situated, pre-figurative alternative forms of care. Such objectives anticipate a distinctly relational and democratic set of solutions,not just for the problem of psychiatry but for injustices in society as a whole.

To a certain extent mental health nursing has been slow to engage with either critique. This is a pity, but can be rectified. Given that nurses comprise the dominant section of the psy-workforce, at least in terms of numbers, it can beargued that we need to rise to the challenge of Sedgwickian and Mad Studies criticisms, a task we are capable of taking on. Both seek alliances with critically minded staff.

Nurses need the correct tools to meet this challenge, and there are implications for education and curriculum. Ultimately, our very legitimacy is under threat and we need to decide, if these critical debates are important to us, which side of the argument are we on? There are not necessarily any well defined right or wrong answers to these questions. What we may need is a commitment to start talking about them and to do so in a respectively deliberate way.

We hope that you can join us for what will hopefully be an interesting and lively conversation. As with all our chats, everyone is welcome and we will also produce a transcript after the chat for those of you who can’t make it.

Chat questions:

• Are nurses concerned about the politics of mental health and how mental health carework can be thought of in these terms? Should they be?
• Are mental health nurses prepared for the challenges posed by radical service userand survivor groups? Should they be?
• What are our favoured political views and how do these intersect with beliefs about practice?
• What do we like and dislike about mental health work?
• What do we know about service users’ and survivors’ views on mental health care?
• What are the similarities and differences between the psychopolitical and madstudies tendencies?
• How relevant is all this to our daily working lives?
• Do these ideas have any use for nurse education? Should they figure more extensively in curricula?
• Which side are we on?
• What are the possibilities for organising nursing and care work differently?

The two short book reviews accessible here are a quick way of introducing some of the key ideas.

McKeown, M. & Spandler, H. (2013) Book Review of Brenda Le Francois, Robert Menzies and Geoffrey Reaume(eds) Mad matters: a critical reader in Canadian mad studies. Canadian Scholars Press, Toronto. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 22, 472.

McKeown, M. (2016) Book Review of Peter Sedgwick. Psychopolitics. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 25, 180.

Other published work and references may be referred to in the chat. @mickmckeown2016

Mick is a Reader in Democratic Mental Health

Mick has had a lengthy career as a mental health nurse and researcher. He has a long standing interest in issues of power and equality within services and wider society. With an emphasis on sociological analyses he takes a critical view of mental health care and the professional practices there in.

http://www.uclan.ac.uk/staff_profiles/mick_mckeow.php