Psychiatric ''survivors'' and testimonies of self-harm [An article from: Social Science & Medicine]

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Description:
UK ''Psychiatric Survivors''-a variety of activist groups comprising individuals who have been on the ''receiving end'' of psychiatric treatment-have, since the mid-1980s, mounted a challenge to the psychiatric system. ''Survivors'' have formulated their own knowledge-base concerning a range of human problems hitherto regarded as the province of ''official'' psychiatry only. ''Official'' knowledge stresses scientific classification, professional expertise, and statistical evidence: ''Survivor'' knowledge, by contrast, emphasises individual experience, the traumas of the life-course, and the personal testimony of the survivor as itself expert data. This paper focuses upon the truth-claims enacted by the ''testimony of the survivor'' and the relation of ''testimony'' to political practice. Specifically, I analyse a key text containing the testimonies of female survivors whose behaviour has been officially labelled as ''deliberate self-harm''; that is, women who harm themselves, through self-poisoning or self-laceration, and subsequently receive medical/psychiatric treatment. The main focus is upon the political functions of testimony in theory and practice-the ways in which ''survivors'' challenge the power of psychiatry.