ABSTRACT
At present, mental healthcare research is fractured and there is a lack of interdisciplinary collaboration and, perhaps not unrelatedly, a lack of progress. The chapter argues that social sciences and humanities work is not engaged with by clinical researchers because it contains Foucauldian assumptions about power and knowledge that fail to match lived experience. Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice is helpful, but doesn’t offer a way forwards, in part because it frames clinician prejudice as the problem. The chapter argues for an analytic focus on health institutions as causally important. The literature on bureaucracy suggests several points of tension between working in an accountable bureaucracy and the goals of mental healthcare.
