Abstract
The consumer participation movement has growing international recognition in policy and research. Focusing on the collective context, this research systematically examines how two advocacy organizations in the Australian mental health sector are organized and motivated to advance the cause. Qualitative studies analyzed 17 strategic communication documents and nine interviews with members and staff to identify major themes relating to goals, activities, and values driving advocates and their organizations. Five major focus issues were identified: building consumer and carer participation, voice and recognition for consumers and carers, influencing and improving mental health systems, effective collaboration and partnerships, and building organizational strength. Findings demonstrate what drives consumer and carer advocates and their organizations to contribute to an organized, strong, and unified movement. While they focus on cementing genuine and effective consumer participation in health service and policy, they highly value partnerships based on mutual respect to improve mental health systems and outcomes.
Highlights
Several large-scale social movements in mental health have emerged since the early 1800s (Bowl, 2002; Everett, 1994)
The contemporary Consumer and Psychiatric Survivor Movement in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia began during the 1960s/1970s coinciding with deinstitutionalization and rising anti-psychiatry sentiment, but coalesced in the 1980s/1990s, building new force where change was driven by ex-patients of mental health services for the first time (Epstein, 2013; Hinton, 2009; Kaufman, 1999; Robson, 2008; Starkman, 1981/2013)
At least for those identifying as mental health consumers or service users, is systemic mental health advocacy, a social movement that seeks to change the disadvantageous policies and practices of legal, government, and health systems from within to develop a more inclusive community for people with mental disorders
Summary
Several large-scale social movements in mental health have emerged since the early 1800s (Bowl, 2002; Everett, 1994). This is a problem of creating common cause, and our previous research in the field of mental illness stigma reduction (Gee, Khalaf, & McGarty, 2007; Gee & McGarty, 2013a, 2013b) has indicated that one way to achieve this outcome is for people with mental disorders, health professionals, and other members of the community to come to see themselves as members of a cooperative community that is working together to reduce stigma and improve the circumstances of people with mental disorders Holding aspirations for such a cooperative community is a predictor of commitment to take action to make such a community real (Gee & McGarty, 2013a), leading Gee and McGarty (2013b) to propose that movement toward a cooperative community provides a basis for innovative bottom-up solution generation through respectful engagement (for an international application, see Lala et al, 2014). We set out to better understand the people behind mental health advocacy and to understand the specific activities of advocates as well as the goals and vision that drive them as a group
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