User Action — The Last Ten Years
| Pages | 14-15 |
| Published date | 01 December 1996 |
| Date | 01 December 1996 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322199600037 |
| Author | Peter Campbell |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
14 The Mental Health Review 1:4 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 1996
Peter Campbell
SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT
Peter Campbell is a mental health system survivor. This
article is based on a presentation given at the conference
User Empowerment: Ten Years On, in Nottingham in
March 1996.
Comparatively little has been written about
the history of user/survivor action in the
United Kingdom. This short article does
not attempt to give a balanced account — even of
developments in the last ten years. Rather, it is
made up of the thoughts and impressions of one
mental health system survivor who has been
consistently involved in actions, either at a local or
national level, since the early 1980s. My journey
into a ‘user movement’, that is currently notable for
its diversity, was through campaigning rather than
advocacy groups. Part of my work in the last four or
five years has been helping to establish a poetry
workshop and performance network for survivors.
1985 is often cited as a significant year for
user/survivor action. Indeed, some people will say
that it was the year when the ‘user involvement’
started. There were important events in 1985: the
founding of Survivors Speak Out in January 1986.
Nottingham Advocacy Group, which was to play a
crucial part in the development of mental health
advocacy schemes, was in gestation in 1985. At that
time, therewereless than ten independent user
groups whereas now there are hundreds. In that
sense, looking back from the middle of the 1990s,
1985 can look very much like a real beginning.
This is probably a mistaken view and does less
than justice to the important continuities between
what was going on in the decade before 1985.
Mental health service recipients involved in action
groups are still demanding (and very frequently still
not witnessing) the same kind of transformations
that werefought for in the 1970s. One of the most
significant differences is that mental health workers,
managers and governments have discovered ‘user
participation’. Nor is it true that there were no
action groups and no worthwhile user/survivor action
before 1985. Although the significance of groups
like the Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression
(CAPO) and the British Networks for Alternatives
to Psychiatry (BNAP) that were active in the early
1980s has never been properly examined, there is a
danger that their lack of funded permanency, their
more separatist, more ideological stance, will result
in their contribution being undervalued, particularly
under the scrutiny of more pragmatic and less
confrontational successors.
Identity is a key issue. I believe it is important
that user/survivor activists should be aware of the
historythey have inherited and should not accept
that their involvement is just a creation of NHS
consumerism. We are part of an imperfectly
documented struggle that has been going on for
centuries and which has not always been bloodless.
It is in the interests of those who maintain the
services that form the spine of the wider mental
health system to sanitise our work, to depoliticise it
and to confine it to the narrowest possible context.
The last ten years may have been different. They
have not been new. In that respect, I always find it
salutary to meet people like Jimmy Laing (writer of
Fifty Years In The System), read about Leonard Roy
Frank (US survivor who has campaigned against
ECT for over 30 years) and come across survivors
who were active in the Mental Patients Union (UK
group in 1970s).
The last ten years has certainly seen a proliferation
of independent user action groups and user-led
projects. At the same time, a number of networking
groups have been established covering England,
Wales, Scotland and the United Kingdom. T
wo
international networks also now exist on limited
resources — one European and one worldwide. In
the last five years it has been increasingly possible
for many local groups to obtain solid funding and a
User Action – The Last Ten Years
FEATURE
To continue reading
Request your trial