Empowerment and mental health in community: Narratives of psychiatric consumer/survivors

This paper clarifies the concepts of empowerment and mental health and exam ines their interrelationships in a qualitative study of psychiatric consume r/survivors participating in three innovative community mental health progr ammes. Focus group interviews with 59 stakeholders and in-depth stories of six consumer/survivors served as the data base. We defined mental health as the development of choice, control, and community integration and the acqu isition of valued resources, and our research identified indicators of each of these qualities. Moreover, we found empowering processes at the micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis that facilitated the recovery of mental health, as well as disempowering processes that impeded mental health. The findings are discussed in the context of the literature on innovative pract ices and the emergence of an alternative paradigm in community mental healt h. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.