Carla Gaskin Charles & Lewis Gould-Fensom

We are two provisional psychologists completing our Master of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sydney. Through our experiences working in community mental health care, we each have brought an appreciation of the importance of centring community and autonomy in the processes of recovery. However, throughout our education, information about the current and historic mistreatment and disempowerment of consumers has been conspicuously absent. We believe acknowledging the oppressive role played by mental health professionals is the first step in our journey toward becoming conscious and aware clinicians, advocates, and activists.

Our participation in the project canvassing the history of community mental health in Australia has helped fill this gap in our education as psychologists. Being part of a team that upholds co-production principles means that our training is informed by voices, ideas and methodologies of lived-experience experts, something that is sorely missing from our Masters program. We feel deeply honoured to have the opportunity to write a thesis that centres lived-experience perspectives as they relate to individual’s sense of selfhood and identity, and the processes through individuals are empowered to become agents of social change.

Through our research so far, we have recognised the expert positioning of professionals over consumers as endemic to mental health care. We have learnt how this has created unsafe and oppressive situations for people in vulnerable mental states or who have had their autonomy suspended under mental health legislation. These stories have galvanised us to imagine a more nuanced and equitable understanding of the therapeutic alliance and to be critical of the power imbalance we benefit from within that relationship.

We believe that our role in this project, and as future clinicians, is to listen to lived experience voices and to collaborate equitably with consumers. We have been inspired by the stories we have heard through this research to shape and develop our clinical practice in alignment with the ideals of the consumer movement, which are as relevant now as they were back then. This research team has already begun to inform the intention and trajectories of our future work with consumers, professionals and the mental health care structures within which we will soon be working.