Exploring the Case for Truth and Reconciliation in Mental Health Services

Mckeown, Michael orcid iconORCID: 0000-0003-0235-1923 and Spandler, Helen orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-0970-5141 (2017) Exploring the Case for Truth and Reconciliation in Mental Health Services. Mental Health Review Journal, 22 (2). pp. 83-94. ISSN 1361-9322

[thumbnail of Author Accepted Manuscript]
Preview
PDF (Author Accepted Manuscript) - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.

233kB

Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1108/MHRJ-01-2017-0011

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the case for a truth and reconciliation (T&R) process in the context of mental health services.
Design/methodology/approach

The approach is a conceptual review of T&R approaches; a consideration of why they are important; and how they might be applied in the context of mental health services and psychiatry. First, the paper sets out a case for T&R in psychiatry, giving some recent examples of how this might work in practice. Then it outlines potential objections which complicate any simplistic adoption of T&R in this context.
Findings

In the absence of an officially sanctioned T&R process a grassroots reparative initiative in mental health services may be an innovative bottom-up approach to transitional justice. This would bring together service users, survivors and refusers of services, with staff who work/ed in them, to begin the work of healing the hurtful effects of experiences in the system.
Originality/value

This is the first paper in a peer-reviewed journal to explore the case for T&R in mental health services. The authors describe an innovative T&R process as an important transitional step towards accomplishing reparation and justice by acknowledging the breadth and depth of service user and survivor grievances. This may be a precondition for effective alliances between workers and service users/survivors. As a result, new forms of dialogic communication and horizontal democracy might emerge that could sustain future alliances and prefigure the social relations necessary for more humane mental health services.


Repository Staff Only: item control page