Research Interest: Mental health

Four critiques of biomedicine as a dominant framework for understanding ‘problems with living’ have inspired transformation of the mental health system. Firstly, the emphasis on participation and inclusion through consumer-led and recovery-oriented practice has profoundly changed the role of consumers from passive recipients of care to being more informed and empowered decision-makers whose lay knowledge and personal experience of mental illness are a resource (McCann and Sharek, 2014). This reconceptualisation has been formalised in the ‘recovery’ model, which has critiqued the stigmatising judgements of medico-psychiatric discourse about deviance and their accompanying social exclusion and disadvantage (Masterson and Owen, 2006). The third has been the recognition of cultural diversity and a critique of the limits of universalism. Finally, gender activism has exposed fractures in the sex/gender system and has led to a greater awareness of diversity, with regard to gender and sexual orientation.

From De Souza, R. (2016). Review: Australian mental health nurses and transgender clients: Attitudes and knowledge. Journal of Research in Nursing, 0(0) 1–2. DOI: 10.1177/1744987115625008