| Ethnographic research
conducted in an adolescent psychiatric hospital in the UK demonstrated
that children are being ‘voluntarily’ subjected to a coercive
system of treatment and the abuse of power. However, children are
not merely vulnerable, passive victims of psychiatry. Instead, the
relations of power are multi-directional, with the institution, practitioners
and children actively exercising power amongst and between each other.
Given this complex display of power relations, it is not to say that
the children have equal opportunities to exercise power over the practitioners
or the institution. Regardless, these findings exemplify children’s
agency in terms of resisting psychiatric oppression at least at the
individual level. Although the experiences of oppression in the psychiatry
in some ways relate directly to the experience of discrimination and
oppression in the greater society due to belonging to the minority
groups of ‘children’ and ‘patients’, the experiences
are not additive in relation to these aspects of their identities.
Instead, the category ‘child’ may actually position the
children in a place of resistance, given the international legislative
backing of children’s participation rights in mental health
services. Adult patients do not have similar legislation in terms
of having rights to direct involvement in decision making regarding
their treatment, care and service development. The exclusion of children
labeled with psychiatric disorders from the children’s rights
movement needs to change. Children’s rights academics, activists
and lawyers as well as children’s organizations need to find
ways to give distressed children a platform, an audience and a voice.
The lack of involvement of children within the psychiatric survivor
movement represents another unacceptable exclusion. The survivor movement
needs to take up the cause of child patients, including finding ways
to make the movement accessible to young activists and creating space
for young voices to be heard along with adult survivors. I provided
a presentation of the findings of this research as highlighted above
followed by a workshop where together we generated ideas of how to
facilitate children’s use of their agency in collectively contesting
and resisting psychiatry. |