Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- one Sociology and survivor research: an introduction
- two Mental health service users’ experiences and epistemological fallacy
- three Doing good carer-led research: reflecting on ‘Past Caring’ methodology
- four Theorising service user involvement from a researcher perspective
- five How does who we are shape the knowledge we produce? Doing collaborative research about personality disorders
- six Where do service users’ knowledges sit in relation to professional and academic understandings of knowledge?
- seven Recognition politics as a human rights perspective on service users’ experiences of involvement in mental health services
- eight Theorising a social model of ‘alcoholism’: service users who misbehave
- nine “Hard to reach”? Racialised groups and mental health service user involvement
- ten Individual narratives and collective knowledge: capturing lesbian, gay and bisexual service user experiences
- eleven Alternative futures for service user involvement in research
- twelve Brief reflections
- Appendix Details of the seminar series
- Index
eight - Theorising a social model of ‘alcoholism’: service users who misbehave
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- one Sociology and survivor research: an introduction
- two Mental health service users’ experiences and epistemological fallacy
- three Doing good carer-led research: reflecting on ‘Past Caring’ methodology
- four Theorising service user involvement from a researcher perspective
- five How does who we are shape the knowledge we produce? Doing collaborative research about personality disorders
- six Where do service users’ knowledges sit in relation to professional and academic understandings of knowledge?
- seven Recognition politics as a human rights perspective on service users’ experiences of involvement in mental health services
- eight Theorising a social model of ‘alcoholism’: service users who misbehave
- nine “Hard to reach”? Racialised groups and mental health service user involvement
- ten Individual narratives and collective knowledge: capturing lesbian, gay and bisexual service user experiences
- eleven Alternative futures for service user involvement in research
- twelve Brief reflections
- Appendix Details of the seminar series
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Service user involvement in research is by its nature political, in that it is aiming to effect change and improvement (McLaughlin, 2011). This is even more the case when service users disagree with established views as to what constitutes ‘health’ and ‘normality’ as regards their particular condition. Survivors of mental health treatment testify in this volume and elsewhere (Sweeney et al, 2009) to the fallibility and inadequacy of medical diagnoses and solutions (Rose, 2001). Survivors of alcohol and drug treatment have yet to develop their critical and political voice. This chapter considers some of the issues involved.
Faced with the damaging psychosocial consequences of extensive alcohol use, which are likely to include diminished personal esteem, loss of family support, loss of income and, ultimately, homelessness, alcohol service users tend to accept with little question a view of themselves as simultaneously immoral and ill. Mutual aid experts and academics support both positions:
[We believe] that we are alcoholic and cannot manage our own lives.… That no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1976, p 60)
It is now admitted that the brain of an addicted patient no longer functions like a normal brain: it has lost the freedom to decide when confronted with the object of its addiction. (Reynaud, 2007, p 1513)
Most people who are or were ‘alcoholics’ appear to agree. They are likely to have learnt to talk about ‘becoming sober’, ‘being in lifelong recovery’. They will try to do without the very substance that, like prescribed medication for other conditions, often enabled them to take part in that society, at least for some of the time (Ettorre, 2007). They may struggle desperately for approval from family and friends. The general acceptance of a moral ingredient to the condition skews research into its causes, affecting researcher, researched and public alike, telling us most about the society that has promoted it.
It was my ongoing distress as a recovered ‘alcoholic’, aware of the lifelong damage caused to my family and to me by this approach, which led me to examine the social injustice and oppression involved.
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- Information
- Mental Health Service Users in ResearchCritical Sociological Perspectives, pp. 105 - 120Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2013