by: altmentalities ~~ Empowerment in the context of trauma Empowerment: the new favorite buzzword of mental health policymakers. I’ve already mused about what that word might mean – both to them [certainly not having much to do with agency or self-actualization] and those of us interested in practicing true psychiatry (literally, soul healing).
You remember that 2006 NASMHPD report on morbidity in the “seriously mentally ill” population, so often cited in the current literature, the main navigational tool charting the course of mental health policy for the past decade or so (that I wrote about here and here)? One of the main policy recommendations to come out of that report was that caregivers should “support wellness and empowerment of persons served, to improve mental and physical well-being.” Sounds good, but don’t be fooled – they didn’t really mean that. What they want is to “empower individuals to engage in services” – empower people to become lifelong patients. What they want is controlled [false] empowerment as a strategy for achieving lifelong treatment plan adherence (non-compliance/non-adherence being the $100,000,000,000 problem for pharmaceutical companies – their words.)
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