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Politics of Recognition: What Can a Human Rights Perspective Contribute to Understanding Users' Experiences of Involvement in Mental Health Services?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

Lydia Lewis
Lydia Lewis*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick E-mail: lydia.lewis@warwick.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the UK, participation in decision-making is increasingly being viewed as a right for users of mental health services. Yet research repeatedly finds a policy implementation gap in this area. Drawing on a localised, qualitative study involving three mental health service user/community groups, this article frames this issue in terms of a ‘politics of recognition’. It demonstrates how whilst government user involvement policies officially attempt to recognise users and their voices, they simultaneously reconstitute failures of recognition in terms of status subordination and a disqualified identity for service users, thereby obstructing participatory parity and amounting to a dereliction of the core principles underlying human rights.

Type
Themed Section on Mental Health and Human Rights
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 257 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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