Exploring the case for truth and reconciliation in mental health services
Author(s):
Helen Spandler, (Department of Social Work, Care and Community, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK)
Single Sentence Summary:
This paper explores the case for a truth and reconciliation (T&R) process in the context of mental health services and suggests that the process may also help expand the horizons of transitional justice beyond a focus on healing historical abuses.
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.
Keywords:
Mental health services,
Epistemic injustice,
Psychiatric harm,
Psychiatric survivor movement,
Transitional justice,
Truth and reconciliation
Type:
Conceptual paper
Publisher:
Emerald Publishing Limited
Received:
29 January 2017
Revised:
13 February 2017, 27 April 2017
Accepted:
28 April 2017
Copyright:
© Emerald Publishing Limited 2017
Published by Emerald Publishing Limited
Licensed re-use rights only
Citation:
Helen Spandler,
Mick Mckeown, (2017) "Exploring the case for truth and reconciliation in mental health services", Mental Health Review Journal, Vol. 22 Issue: 2, pp.83-94,
https://doi.org/10.1108/MHRJ-01-2017-0011
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