Beyond the counter-narrative: Exploring alternative narratives of recovery from the psychiatric survivor movement
Abstract
The discourse of the medical model of mental illness tends to dominate people’s conceptions of the origins and treatments of psychopathology. This reductionistic discourse defines people’s experiences of psychological distress and recovery in terms of illnesses, chemical imbalances, and broken brains. However, the master narrative does not represent every individual’s lived experience, and alternative narratives of mental health and recovery exist that challenge our traditional understandings of normality and psychopathology. Guided by the method of interpretive interactionism, we examined how psychiatric survivors position themselves in relation to the medical model’s narrative of recovery. In its inception, the psychiatric survivor movement created a counter-narrative of protest in opposition to the medical model’s description and treatment of psychopathology. Since then, the movement has moved beyond the counter-narrative and has constructed an alternative narrative; one that is not defined in opposition to the master narrative but instead participates in an entirely different discourse.
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Adame and Knudson (81) "Another traditional construction from the survivors' narratives was "recovery from the mental health system" [...] all four participants felt that recovering from psychiatric interventions (e.g., ECT, drugs, solitary confinement) was one of, if not the biggest, challenge in their entire healing process".
“Examples can be found in Adame and Knudson (81) “Another traditional construction from the survivors' narratives was “recovery from the mental health system” […] all four participants felt that recovering from psychiatric interventions (e.g., ECT, drugs, solitary confinement) was one of, if not the biggest, challenge in their entire healing process””
From Recovery from Severe Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review of Service User and Informal Caregiver Perspectives (2021) · cites this paper as [81]
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- Authors
- Adame, A. L., & Knudson, R. M.
- Affiliations
- Miami University (US)
- ORCID
- Adame, Alexandra L.
- Venue
- Narrative Inquiry
- Publisher
- John Benjamins Publishing Company
- Published
- 2007-12-31
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 157-178
- ISSN
- 1387-6740 (ISSN-L)
- 1569-9935
- OpenAlex
- W1977036214
- Cited by
- 96
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 2.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Narrative Inquiry (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mental Health and Patient Involvement
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Mental Health and Psychiatry
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices
- Keywords
- medical model of mental illness, counter-narratives, psychopathology, normality, recovery, interpretive interactionism
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