mental health, social work education, critical practice, power, identity
This article discusses an approach to mental health education that aims to prepare students to
become critical practitioners with the vision and skills to understand human distress in life contexts.
This approach questions traditional knowledge-formation in mental health as it is not focused on
psychiatric diagnoses as a tool to learn about ‘mental illnesses’. It also involves rethinking issues
of power, language and identity by encouraging students to question what is often experienced as
an oppressive, coercive mental health system and by putting the voice of service-users/survivors
in the centre of practice. Such an education often clashes with the ethos and practice of current
mental health services, which, despite heralding a recovery agenda, in their majority, remain medical
in focus. Drawing from the author’s experience in mental health education, the article highlights
the potential of educational processes to transform hegemonic practice and the challenges and
opportunities contained in this process.