The ‘political correctness’ debate and caring in psychiatric nursing

Abstract

In recent years the controversy over so-called‘political correctness’ has figured prominently in discourses of higher education. In terms of nursing, the issue of ‘political correctness’ cannot be confined to intellectual word-games, but is of key significance in the debate around the nature of professional caring. This paper is a discussion of therelevance of the controversy around ‘political correctness’ to the practice of psychiatric nursing. It placed the ‘political correctness’ debate in the context of the current debate within nursing about definitions of `caring', and discusses the connections between both these debates and the theoretical imperatives of person-centred psychology. After discussing the particularproblems which arise when the three issues of ‘political correctness’, ‘caring’ and humanistic psychology are brought together in this way; it proposes a politically focused strategy for the future development of psychiatric nursing. Although it is written from theperspective of psychiatric nursing in Britain and is very much concerned with the use of a particular language; the arguments put forward are equally appropriate to other English-speaking countries, and perhaps also to non-English speaking countries.