Psychiatry and/or recovery: a critical analysis

Abstract

This perspective paper aims to present a personal viewpoint on the impact of psychiatric discourse on the principles of recovery in mental health care. Mental health services espouse these principles, yet psychiatric discourse remains the dominant model. A critical analysis will examine how psychiatry maintains this dominance. The aim is to examine how psychiatric discourse constructs both the nature of mental distress and its treatment, and how it maintains its power as the dominant authority and its relationship to recovery principles. The paper concludes that psychiatric discourse is the antithesis of recovery principles and that its authority is perpetuated through co-opting a medical explanatory model, claiming expertise in the ability to predict social risk, and maintaining a tightly controlled echo chamber. A way forward involves the dismantling of the hierarchical service delivery model based on psychiatric discourse and replacing it with a more horizontal service delivery model in which the lived experience of mental distress is central. Regular audit of services needs to prioritize recovery principles. The implications for mental health nursing are considered.