This article by Lydia Sapouna has been published in the journal Critical and Radical Social Work. The article summary says:
“This article discusses an approach to mental health education that aims to prepare students to become critical practitioners with the vision and skills to understand human distress in life contexts. This approach questions traditional knowledge-formation in mental health as it is not focused on psychiatric diagnoses as a tool to learn about ‘mental illnesses’. It also involves rethinking issues of power, language and identity by encouraging students to question what is often experienced as an oppressive, coercive mental health system and by putting the voice of service-users/survivors in the centre of practice. Such an education often clashes with the ethos and practice of current mental health services, which, despite heralding a recovery agenda, in their majority, remain medical in focus. Drawing from the author’s experience in mental health education, the article highlights the potential of educational processes to transform hegemonic practice and the challenges and opportunities contained in this process.”
You can read and/or download the full article from here.
