ABSTRACT
The existentialist concept of “authenticity” will be an important theme in seeking to make sense of mental health problems and efforts to prevent them and alleviate them when they do arise. The situation regarding the alleged status of mental health problems as illnesses is even more complicated. “Sick role” expectations in relation to mental health problems are therefore very different from parallel physical illness expectations, generally much more negative and thus potentially very disempowering. The term “mental illness” is problematic, as it suggests an internal pathology that can be incontrovertibly categorised and cured by biomedicine; a disease state that occurs within the individual and is separate from culture, values and politics. One of the by-products of a medical model approach to mental health problems is that it creates a set of expectations about what is expected of the patient, namely the “sick role.”.
