Mary Nettle
Cooperation and Understanding versus Custodialism
and Violence
User- and Survivor Involvement in Services, Education,
Administration and Political Decision-making
This is a vast topic and with only 15 minutes
to discuss the issues involved I am going to concentrate most
on what I know which is the situation in the UK or even more
so now England where I live and work as a mental health user
consultant. I will explain my journey from being a passive
recipient of violence and custody for my own good to being
enabled to speak at this event on co-operation and understanding
in the areas described above. Patient and public involvement
has been the mantra of successive governments in the UK of
both left and right persuasion, I will explore what this has
meant to user/survivors survivors such as myself. I will explain
how I have adopted a pragmatic approach by working with the
mental health system to try and make the system accept the
need for change by taking on board our views and concerns.
However I will acknowledge that this pragmatic approach could
be seen to have failed as new coercive elements are currently
being debated and are likely to become law. I will try and
analyse why mental health users and survivors are listened
to but not heard and the frustrations this engenders in not
only users and survivors but our allies in the system who
also want radical change from coercion to co-operation which
would be better for everyone’s mental health.
Introduction by Peter Lehmann |