A Fragile Revolution

Consumers and Psychiatric Survivors Confront the Power of the Mental Health System

By Barbara Everett
Subjects Psychology, Political Science, Medical
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Paperback : 9780889203426, 263 pages, January 2006

Table of Contents for A Fragile Revolution: Consumers and Psychiatric Survivors Confront the Power of the Mental Health System by Barbara Everett
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The research questions
A word about methodology
Some caveats
1. Nothing changes and no one gets better
Becoming a professional helper
What is mental illness?
Help for the patients
Nothing changes and no one gets better
Control battles
Who’s in charge of the staff?
Helpless and hopeless
In conclusion
2. From insanity to mental illness to psychiatric disability
Insanity
Mental illness
Anti-psychiatric thought and feminist criticism
The therapeutic community
Deinstitutionalization
Psychiatric disability
In conclusion
3. Power and protest
Power inequity and oppression
Dominance
For your own good
Power as protest
Agency
Power as a contractual relationship
New social movements
Personal empowerment and social action
When things go wrong
In conclusion
4. A new power contract?
Partnership
Another group of partners
The making of policy
The forgotten partners
In conclusion
5. A special bond
Telling stories
Four stories
Sadly mistaken
A special bond
The personal becomes political
In conclusion
6. Them
Invisibility
They hate emotion
It’s just a job
They are abusive
But they’re more like us than they think
The system
In conclusion
7. Us
Getting involved
Is this a social movement
Consumer? Survivor? Consumer\survivor? Or just a person?
When some of “us” joined “them”
The Ontario Psychiatric Survivors Alliance
In conclusion
8. Partnership
The threat and the promise of partnership
The problems with partnership
The personal costs
Feeling used
If it’s not partnership, what is it?
Will mental health reform work?
In conclusion
9. What do consumers and survivors believe in?
It’s a chicken or egg thing
What needs to change?
What are consumers and survivors going to do about it?
Disability rights
In conclusion
10. Final thoughts and understandings
So, what’s it all about?
A legacy of violence
The power of powerless people
The powerlessness of powerful people
Things change and people get better
A political identity in search of a future
In conclusion
Postscript
Appendix I. Research methodology
Sample selection
A global view of the respondents
Data collection techniques and sources
Data analysis
References
Index

Description

Despite two centuries and three major reform movements, mental patients have remained on the outside of the mainstream of society, often living in poverty and violence. Today we are undergoing yet another period of reform and, in a historical first, ex-mental patients, now calling themselves consumers and psychiatric survivors, have been recruited in record numbers by the Ontario government to participate in the change process.
A Fragile Revolution investigates the complex relationship between ex-mental patients, the government, the mental health system, and mental health professionals. It also explores how the recent changes in policy have affected that relationship, creating new tensions and new opportunities.
Using qualitative interviews with prominent consumer and survivor activists, Everett examines how consumers and survivors define themselves, how they define mental illness, and how their personal experience has been translated into political action.
While it is clear that consumers and survivors have affected the rhetoric of reform, they know that words do not equal action. As they struggle to develop their own separate advocacy agenda, they acknowledge that theirs is a fragile revolution, but one that is here to stay.

Reviews

A Fragile Revolution demonstrates quite unequivocally, a first-rate strategic thinker, competent analyst, and elegant literary stylist.... This is the book you give to non-academic Psych Industry Workers for their `own short course in what the antipsychiatry movement is all about.... A major contribution and a must-read for anyone concerned with Canadian mental health policy making and development
- Byron Fraser, In a Nutshell, Winter/Spring 2002