ABSTRACT
The psychiatric system can be disempowering for many of its recipients. Users of services have increasingly been resisting and challenging this disempowerment by speaking out against the system as it exists and by working towards the development of alternatives. Such action, aimed at empowering users of the mental health system to take more control, has come to be termed the ‘user/survivor movement’—a collection of area-based action groups and individual users promoting often dissenting explanations and responses to emotional distress.
