Dialogue: Talking About Psy-oppression with Family Members and Mental Health Workers

This chapter explores the perspectives of mental health and human service workers on psychiatric coercion, as well as the perspectives and experiences of family members. While it is essential to acknowledge the complicity of many mental health workers in perpetuating injustices against psychiatrised people, interviews and action research processes revealed that several mental health workers experienced a substantial mismatch between their personal values and extent of psychiatric coercion that they observed and participated in during their employment. Themes included: despair in response to an unjust system; the gendered dimensions of psy-oppression are undeniable; workers who question the status quo are pathologised. Family members discussed experiences of immense disempowerment as a result of coercive practices, with themes including: the contemporary mental health system is unsafe; mental health professionals control the narrative; alternatives to hospital are non-existent. Such narratives subvert simplistic understandings about the underlying benevolence of the mental health system and disrupt dominant discourses relating to psychiatric coercion.