Creating Identities Mental Health Consumer to Citizen?

• Summary: Support groups for people with a mental illness have been in existence for over 40 years. The current consumerist agenda constructs people with a mental illness as consumers of mental health services such as support groups. To explore the range and type of support groups in New South Wales, Australia, an empirical study based upon interviews with a purposive sample of respondents with experience of using support groups and a postal questionnaire was conducted. • Findings: From the study it became apparent that (so-called) consumers were challenging the construction of themselves as consumers of services. Instead they were asserting that their contribution to the treatment and management of their illness was closer to that of ‘expert’ than of consumer. • Application: From these findings, we argue that this reconstruction of their self-perceptions suggests that people with a mental illness are challenging the consumerist agenda and acting as social citizens. This change in self-perception by mentally ill people should be addressed by policymakers and practitioners in all forms of social work practice. Keywords citizenship consumerism mental illness support groups Consumers of mental health services have a long history of using support groups, which dates back to the 1940s, when groups were established to assist people with a mental illness to deal with residual symptoms of psychiatric illness (Low, 1966). The Encounter Group Movement and the development of therapy groups during the late 1960s and early 1970s fostered the idea of group therapy, but many groups quickly excluded people with manic depressive illness, schizo-phrenia or other serious mental health problems. Support groups for relatives and friends were formed before groups for sufferers, and were considered to be the single biggest advance in coping with schizophrenia since the introduction of anti-psychotic drugs (Torrey, 1983)