Peer work in Australian mental health policy: What ‘problems’ are we solving and to what effect(s)?
Aimee Sinclair, Christina Fernandes, Sue Gillieatt, Lyn Mahboub
Abstract
The inclusion of peer work within mental health policy offers potential for lived experience expertise to shape the construction of, and subsequent responses to, mental health ‘problems’. However, increasingly, scholars and activists are highlighting limits to such inclusionary practices. We explore these tensions through a critical analysis of problem representations including peer workers within Australian mental health policy. Drawing on Mad studies and user/survivor scholarship, we suggest that despite popular conceptions of inclusion as having universally positive effects, the inclusion of peer workers within policy has both liberating and troubling effects. Such effects include positioning peer workers as complicit in managing ‘problems’ that reinforce psy-regimes of governance and limiting the political subjectivities available to promote alternative representations. By highlighting such complexity, we endeavour to create opportunities for re-imagining peer work and inclusion in ways that bring such practices closer to achieving self-determination and social justice.