Consumer Tension?

The Consumer Movement and A Post-Institutional Mental
Health Environment – Is There A Tension Emerging? Rob Warriner 2007

The emerging role of the consumer movement in shaping the reform of mental health services in New Zealand since the mid 1980s and in particular in the last 5-10 years, has been profound. Mental health services in New Zealand now bare little resemblance to the reality of the late 1980s. While the mental health consumer movement continues to challenge, increasingly people who have experience of mental illness are employed in a variety of roles within mental health services – operationally and strategically; locally, regionally and nationally.

This thought provoking paper suggests that challenges now face a consumer movement born out of institutional oppression, as the successful evolution of community-based service delivery increasingly becomes a reality – changing not just the location, but the culture, understandings, expectations and exclusivity of mental health services. The experience of being a “consumer” of mental health services now takes place not so much at the extremities of social life following acute rejection, but within communities that are increasingly diverse, complex, reflective - and often unsure and contradictory.