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User involvement in community mental health services – principles and practices
Author(s) -
BORG M.,
KARLSSON B.,
KIM H. S.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.69
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1365-2850
pISSN - 1351-0126
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2850.2008.01370.x
Subject(s) - rhetoric , mental health , order (exchange) , power (physics) , mental health care , service (business) , health care , mental healthcare , mental health service , psychology , public relations , political science , psychiatry , business , philosophy , linguistics , physics , finance , quantum mechanics , marketing , law
Although user involvement has been the vision of mental health care for the last decades, there are indications of this vision remaining as rhetoric rather than reality in many clinical settings. The objective of this paper is to raise some fundamental questions associated with user involvement. Four challenges are examined: assumptions about the nature of the problems, the power of defining ‘true knowledge’, the power domination in service provision and community mental health care as an accommodating arena for maximizing the service user role. Finally, some strategies are suggested in order to overcome barriers towards realizing the intentions of user involvement.