De-psychiatrizing our own research work

Russo, Jasna

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2022.929056

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…We have argued that despite potentially liberatory intentions, 'inclusion' as constructed within mental health research positions PSWkrs and PS work as the problem, producing and reinforcing forces of psychiatrisation alongside colonialism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression. Our analysis contributes to a growing body of work highlighting the perpetration of epistemic injustice for individuals deemed 'mentally ill' by mainstream mental health research (LeBlanc & Kinsella, 2016;LeFrancois & Voronka, 2022;Russo, 2022). PSWkrs are afforded little power through the subjective effects of dominant notions of 'inclusion'; our experiences and identity reduced to 'fixing' ourselves and others.…”

Section: Implications For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…We identified three problematisations of ‘inclusion’ within the literature: ‘inclusion’ as ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’, and ‘co-optation’. We outline each below, bringing them into dialogue with one another, before considering how research might move further towards ‘transform[ing] the status quo’ ( Russo, 2022 , p. 1).…”

Section: Producing Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the dominance of the positivist paradigm in medical research ( Bacchi, 2016 ; Beresford & Rose, 2009 ) and entanglement of distress with medical discourses ( Russo, 2022 ; Speed, 2006 ), positivist approaches were unsurprisingly dominant in producing this problematisation. A positivist paradigm asks ‘what works?’ ( Bacchi, 2016 ; Gillard, 2019 ), gathering ‘evidence’ about a singular reality.…”

Section: Producing Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, we consider the role of mental health research in producing problems of ‘inclusion’ relating to peer support (PS), evaluating whether such problematisations ‘replicate or transform the status quo’ for individuals deemed ‘mentally ill’ or ‘mad’ ( Russo, 2022 , p. 1, see also LeFrancois & Voronka, 2022 ). Individuals accessing mental health services are often denied control, safety, and dignity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Inclusion as Assimilation, Integration, or Co-optation? A Post-Structural Analysis of Inclusion as Produced Through Mental Health Research on Peer Support

et al. 2023

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In the last 20 years, research on the inclusion of peer support within mental health settings has burgeoned, paralleling the broad adoption of service user inclusion within policy as a moral imperative and universally beneficial. Despite the seemingly progressive impetus behind inclusion, increasingly peer support workers talk of exhaustion working within mental health systems, the slow rate of change to oppressive values and practices, and ongoing experiences of workplace exclusion. Such experiences suggest differences in the way in which inclusion is produced across different stakeholder groups and contexts. In this article, we adopt Bacchi’s ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to identify how mental health research, often understood as an a-political activity, produces versions of inclusion. We argue current research predominantly produces inclusion as ‘assimilation’ and ‘integration’. We use critical inclusion, mental health, and survivor scholarship to evaluate the effects these productions have for peer support and peer support workers, finding that both problematise peer support workers and those seeking support. We consider possibilities for more liberatory productions of inclusion, building on the notion of inclusion as ‘co-optation’. Our analysis points to the need for researchers to engage with an uncomfortable reflexivity to enable more emancipatory possibilities regarding inclusion and peer support.

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Section: Implications For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Producing Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Producing Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Inclusion as Assimilation, Integration, or Co-optation? A Post-Structural Analysis of Inclusion as Produced Through Mental Health Research on Peer Support

et al. 2023

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“…Mad Studies has encouraged its proponents to move beyond a psychiatry-anti-psychiatry binary, based primarily on the Global North experience, to pay more critical attention to interventions in the Global South and their own role in this, both as local activists and allied survivors. Thus the survivor researcher Jasna Russo has recently written of the importance of us as survivor activists ensuring that we rid ourselves of any continuing psychiatric influences in our own work, to depsychiatrise it, to avoid enforcing 'the very phenomenon we seek to expose disrupt' (Russo, 2022). There are parallels here of strong relevance for decolonisation, with the way we internalise the model of mental health and can learn from the work of people like Franz Fanon and Paulo Freire and concepts of whiteness and conscientization how to challenge the identities imposed on us (Mills, 2014;Da Costa Paes, 2021).…”

Section: Mad Studies: An Alternative With Emancipatory Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonising global mental health: the role of Mad Studies

Beresford

Rose

2023

Camb. prisms Glob. ment. health

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In recent years, there has been a growing and high-profile movement for 'global mental health'. This has been framed in 'psych system' terms and had a particular focus on what has come to be called the 'Global South' or 'low and middle-income countries'. However, an emerging 'Mad Studies' new social movement has also developed as a key challenge to such globalising pressures. This development, however, has itself both being impeded by some of the disempowering foundations of a global mental health approach, as well as coming in for criticism for itself perpetuating some of the same problems as the latter. At the same time, we are also beginning to see it and related concepts like the UNCRPD being given new life and meaning by Global South activists as well as Global North activists. Given such contradictions and complexities, the aim of this paper is to offer an analysis and explore ways forward consistent with decolonizing global mental health and addressing madness and distress more helpfully globally, through a Mad Studies lens.Mills relies heavily on Fanon and his theory of 'colonising the mind' (Fanon, 1967). However, we cannot approach these questions solely through the work of those from Western societies, however, grounded their claims to follow Southern writers. Importantly, writers have approached decolonialising mental health from within the Global South itself calling for the resurgence of African or South

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‘You Just Treat me like a Human Being’: Using Lived Experience to (Re)imagine Boundary Practices in mental health settings

Sinclair

Mahboub

Gillieatt

et al. 2023

The British Journal of Social Work

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The personal/professional dichotomy, present within dominant notions of professional boundaries, is an ongoing source of tension within social work. Peer workers, given their positioning as both service users and workers, are uniquely placed to contribute to pre-existing efforts in unsettling this dichotomy. Our analysis, informed by dialogic sharing and theorising with fifteen peer support workers, alongside post-humanist and critical mental health approaches, considers the oppressive effects of enacting a personal/professional dichotomy within mental health settings, and conversely, the emancipatory potential of unsettling the dichotomy. Rather than conceptualising such events as boundary ‘crossings’, ‘incursions’ or ‘transgressions’, we suggest (re)imagining professional boundaries as multiple, enacted through ever-shifting socio-material relations. Our analysis supports pre-existing calls for a relational ethic of social work and highlights how lived experience and post-humanism can support the discipline’s commitment to anti-oppressive practices. We recommend further research, informed by lived experience, to explore the complex relations that constitute boundary practices and their effects for both social workers and service users.

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De-psychiatrizing our own research work

Cited by 4 publications

References 20 publications

Inclusion as Assimilation, Integration, or Co-optation? A Post-Structural Analysis of Inclusion as Produced Through Mental Health Research on Peer Support

Inclusion as Assimilation, Integration, or Co-optation? A Post-Structural Analysis of Inclusion as Produced Through Mental Health Research on Peer Support

Decolonising global mental health: the role of Mad Studies

‘You Just Treat me like a Human Being’: Using Lived Experience to (Re)imagine Boundary Practices in mental health settings

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