ABSTRACT
The history of resistance to medicalisation by users of psychiatric services, survivors, and professionals is reviewed, discussing the ways in which each movement identifies itself and seeks to bring about change. The ways in which service-user resistance movements relate to mainstream mental health services have been classified into three main camps: partnership, supportive, and separatist. The form that resistance takes is partly determined by views on medicalisation. In addition to resistance by psychiatric survivors, some psychiatrists have critically evaluated the foundations of their own profession. Traditional methods of treatment and hospitalisation have been influenced and changed by the ‘recovery’ movement, by community-based practice, and by attempts to reclassify mental illness as impairment or disability. It is argued that mental health policy has not yet begun to face up to the challenges posed by criticism (and rejection) of current mental health practices.
