stories, mental health, user involvement, survivor movement, co-option
Special Theme Issue VI: Disordering Social Inclusion: Ethics, Critiques, Collaborations, Futurities.
Telling our own stories of our experiences of distress and madness, of oppression and treatment, of
survival and resistance, is a source of power for people who use or are forced to use mental health
services. Storytelling has created a space for people, whose voices have been traditionally silenced,
to be heard, affirmed, and to organise into collective action. However, recent trends suggest that these
stories are becoming a commodity with mental health organisations and educational institutions using
them primarily to promote their own agendas.
Many stories matter. Stories have been used to disempower and to humanise. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity. (Adichie, 2009)
We three women are activists (survivors, researchers, and educators) and, drawing from our
experiences in the Scottish and Irish contexts, we discuss the need to constantly problematise what
has been achieved through the user movement. We are frustrated because people who share their
stories remain disadvantaged, often unpaid, unequal partners while organisations, professionals, and
academics benefit through receiving funding and building a career path on the basis of user involvement. While this is an unsettling position, we believe that we can make the best of it by being
critical rather than cynical, by staying hopeful and engaged with the constantly changing demands of
activism