Whose Reality is it Anyway? Consumers/Survivors/Ex-Patients Can Speak for Themselves

Abstract

The author uses personal narrative to vividly describe his entry into the mental health system with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Based on his experience, he describes and criticizes a mental health system that forces people to endure oppressive treatments in the name of help. Interweaving first-hand experience as a patient with his later training as a psychologist, he challenges the biomedical brain disease model and advocates for self-help, empowerment, and peer-run alternatives. The history of the almost 30-year-old movement of activist consumers/survivors/ex-patients is described and introduced as offering promising possibilities for creating innovative options for services. Questions are raised as to why mental health professionals have absented themselves from speaking out against the obvious abuses, rights violations, discrimination, and social injustices faced by people who are diagnosed and treated for madness. An invitation is extended for professionals to modify and reconsider the usefulness of the expert role and instead to form new partnerships of collaboration and advocacy.