Silver linings: how mental health activists can help us navigate wicked problems.

Armstrong N., Pratt-Boyden K.

SUMMARY: This article explores how 'wicked problems' such as climate change might force psychiatry to rethink some of its fundamental ideas and ways of working, including clinical boundaries, understandings of psychopathology and ways of organising. We use ethnographic evidence to explore how mental health service 'survivor' activists are already rethinking some of these issues by therapeutically orienting themselves towards social problems and collective understandings of well-being, rejecting 'treatment as usual' approaches to distress. In this way we provide an example of the potential of activists to help psychiatry negotiate the climate crisis.

DOI

10.1192/bjb.2021.25

Type

Journal article

Journal

BJPsych Bull

Publication Date

08/2021

Volume

45

Pages

227 - 230

Keywords

Climate change, ethnography, mental health service survivors, psychiatry, wicked problems

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