Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2004), vol. 10, 361–370 Critical psychiatry in practice

Abstract The ideas of critical psychiatry are influencing a growing number of psychiatrists in Britain and elsewhere. In this article we examine the origins and development of critical psychiatry over the past 25 years, through the work of philosophers such as Foucault and of critical social theorists such as Ingleby, Miller and Rose. We outline the important differences between critical psychiatry and anti-psychiatry. Finally, we examine the current status of critical psychiatry, and what is called postpsychiatry. We regard both as an attempt by practising psychiatrists to engage with service users ’ concerns about psychiatry, with government policies that stress democracy, citizenship and the importance of social and cultural contexts in health care, and with what might broadly be described as postmodernism. Across the world, the landscape of mental health care is changing rapidly. There are several reasons for, and dimensions to, these changes. At one end of the spectrum are shifts in government health policy. At the other is the emergence of the user movement. Over the past 5 years the British government has initiated a series of major health reforms to improv