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Posted Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:59:15
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*Wednesday 13th December 6pm*
King's College London, Franklin Wilkins Building, Room 1.16, Stamford
Street, London SE1 8WA
*'The staff stick together and make you out to be a liar': Can Habermas
help the forensic mental health care service user?*
*Paul Godin (City University)*
*
Abstract
*
In a participatory research project, a group of seven service users met regularly to discuss and make sense of their experiences of prison, special hospitals, medium secure units and community care. Though they identified a number of positive experiences of their care, they particularly objected to service providers being less than open with them, and described providers as being economic with the truth and, at times, deceptive, dishonest, unfair and unhelpful. Service users were frustrated at having their complaints about improper treatment disregarded and their testimonies discredited through reference to their pathological identities. They shared and discussed with each other experiences of service providers' poor communication with them and treatment regimes that were not open for negotiation. In short, they were describing what Habermas terms 'distorted communication'. This paper considers how the processes of this participatory research project's data gathering, analysis and dissemination opened space to facilitate opportunity for 'communicative action'. Forensic mental health care services might inevitably involve the exercise of power over service users to protect society and save service users from their own destructive behaviour. Yet, as this project indicates, it might be possible for forensic mental health care service users and providers to communicate more openly and democratically towards consensual agreement about how to improve the system in which they live and work.
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