Benevolence and Expertise? Questioning the Role of Coercive Psychiatry in Women’s Lives

This chapter provides an overview of dominant mental health paradigms in contemporary Western contexts, with a focus on critically analysing two foundational assumptions of psychiatry: ‘benevolence’ and ‘expertise’. Mainstream mental health campaigns implore people to seek help when distressed, leading to widely accepted claims that mental health services are the only appropriate form of support in times of distress, suffering, or crisis. Strongly held beliefs that coercion is in the best interests of psychiatrised people reinforce the status of mental health services and marginalise the perspectives and knowledges of people with experiences of psychiatric harm, and yet the evidence-base for biomedical psychiatry is highly contested. It is argued that robust critiques of the claims of psychiatry are urgently required, given the harms caused by psychiatric practices, including the routine use of involuntary interventions by acute mental health services. We also argue that a gendered and socio-political analysis of psychiatrised women’s experiences is needed. Given the scale of change that is required, it is essential to move beyond tokenistic reform gestures. This chapter introduces a participatory action research study, exploring women’s experiences of and resistances to involuntary mental health treatment. Key definitions and an overview of the book as a whole are also included.