News

Involving the patient

Users and workers in Nottingham’s mental health services are preparing a major challenge to the ‘medical model’ of psychiatry by developing their own plan for the future of the service.

The Nottingham branch of mental healthcare charity MIND organised a one-day working group, following which a detailed paper has been circulated for discussion before being presented to the local joint planning team for mental health services.

The idea followed a meeting late last year addressed by Lucy Johnstone, a senior clinical psychologist and author of a critical study of traditional psychiatric practice.

Dr Johnstone argued that the medical model puts people into the role of passive patient, dependent on the doctor’s diagnosis and the expectation of getting better as a result of medical treatment. This is not suitable in psychiatry, where getting better involves the patient’s active involvement and responsibility, she said.

The Nottingham plan suggests that services should be based on a ‘psycho-social’ model instead of a medical model. This would mean recognising that ‘relationship networks, issues of gender, sexuality, race and racism, culture, access to accommodation, work, activity and income may all be determinants of the emotional life of people, and must be taken into account’.