Power and participation: an examination of the dynamics of mental health service-­user involvement in Ireland

Discourse and rhetoric of service-­user involvement are pervasive in all mental health services that see themselves as promoting a Recovery ethos. Yet, for the service-­user movement internationally, ‘Recovery’ was articulated as an alternative discourse of overcoming and resisting an institutionalized and oppressive psychiatric model of care. Power is all pervasive within mental health services yet often to expose the unacknowledged structural and power constraints on participants. My research problematizes practices of user involvement in one mental health service area in Ireland. Part I of this article examines the background context of policies and practices of user-­involvement from the service-­user perspective and explains developments in relation to service-­user involvement in the case of Ireland. Participants in my study articulate their motivation for engagement with mental health service reform in terms of the right to participate in social justice terms, of wanting to improve services and involvement. Part II of this article presents an explanatory framework of power, using a model explanatory potential of this model to highlight how hidden and invisible power operates in mental health services is illustrated by selected comments from the same in service-­user involvement spaces. Showing how different forms of power operate in the spaces and levels of mental health involvement can develop service-­users’ services.