Critical mental health nursing : observations from the inside

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1 Nursing violence, nursing violence / Jonathan Gadsby -- 2 Moving around the hyphens: a critical meta-autoethnographic performance / Alec Grant -- 3 A duoethnography of a UK higher education nurse-led recovery college: leadership and studentship / Stephen Williams and Steven Prosser -- 4 A balancing act / Darren Mills -- 5 Power at play: the doctor–nurse game in acute mental health care / Anne Felton and Gemma Stacey -- 6 Colluding with prejudice? The role of mental health nurses in shaping the future of the Mental Health Act / Gary Sidley -- 7 The development of a critically-orientated mental health nursing practice: Michel Foucault’s history of the present / Marc Roberts -- 8 The ideology of recovery in mental health care / Alastair Morgan -- 9 ‘Ackin it back t’brick with autoethnography: reflective practice and mental health recovery research / Tony Sparkes -- 10 Mental health workforce and survivor alliances: a personal story of possibilities, perils and pratfalls / Mick McKeown -- 11 Standing at the cliff edge but very safely belayed / Benny Goodman -- 12 On the borderlands of care: towards a politics of welcoming / Erica Fletcher -- 13 Mental health nursing as therapy / Tony McSherry.

The argument that propels this emphatic book is that mental health nursing cannot continue to pin the blame for its own actions and failings on the psychiatric hierarchy. As the editors point out, mental health nursing is a degree-level qualification; it has achieved its ambition to be `a profession in its own right'. But it has failed to find its own voice and identity or to challenge the coercive, invalidating and traumatising culture and practices within the mainstream mental health services. It has failed above all to subject itself to its own critical scrutiny. This is what these chapters set out to do, starting powerfully with an apology from the editors to all the many millions of users of mental health services who have been subjected to the profession's failure to care: `We cannot think of a new knowledge, approach, skill or kind of empowerment that nurses have themselves forged as a "profession in our own right", of which our service users are identifiably beneficiaries,' they write.