The established state and patient X’s rebellion

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper (anonymised case study) is to explore political perspectives on the detention of patients under the Mental Health Act.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach is ethnographic and narrative.

Findings

The essay offers an exploratory explanation using political theory, of a violent and rebellious act by a person detained as a formal mental health patient. The protest relates to the treatment offered to the patient.

Research limitations/implications

This essay offers a new explanation for a protest for a person detained as a compulsory mental health patient. The essay explores issues relating to political philosophy that the patient applies to their detention.

Practical implications

An understanding of how a patient with a background in academic politics is related in this essay. There is consideration of how an education in politics can be as valid in wellbeing, as a medical degree. It may be that more patients will be spared multiple hospital admissions by the use of effective therapies.

Social implications

There is consideration of the debate about the fitness of current mental health legislation to enable wellbeing, and the debate about the review of mental health law begun in 2017.

Originality/value

This is a perspective of how political theory can inform individual acts. The political inquiry is not of dogma or ideology, either critical or affirming. The discourse is of rebellion with a purpose, not of revolution, class war or national dispute. However, aspects of works that are critical of psychiatry are included in the considerations.

Citation

Voyce, A. (2018), "The established state and patient X’s rebellion", Mental Health and Social Inclusion, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 128-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-02-2018-0003