Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health

"Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health is a valuable 'why' and 'how' guide to conducting research with people who have been marginalized in various ways, notably due to class, ethnicity, race, gender, psychiatric diagnosis, and sexual orientation. It has a broad appeal and is ideally suited for usage in social work, nursing, and just about any course in methods in the arts and humanities." -- Geoffrey Reaume, Critical Disability Studies Program and School of Health Policy and Management, York University

An exceptional showcase of interdisciplinary research, Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health presents various critical theories, methodologies, and methods for transforming mental health research and fostering socially-just mental health practices.

An exceptional showcase of interdisciplinary research, Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health presents various critical theories, methodologies, and methods for transforming mental health research and fostering socially-just mental health practices.

Marina Morrow and Lorraine Halinka Malcoe have assembled an array of international scholars, activists, and practitioners whose work exposes and disrupts the dominant neoliberal and individualist practices found in contemporary mental research, policy, and practice. The contributors employ a variety of methodologies including intersectional, decolonizing, indigenous, feminist, post-structural, transgender, queer, and critical realist approaches in order to interrogate the manifestation of power relations in mental health systems and its impact on people with mental distress. Additionally, the contributors enable the reader to reimagine systems and supports designed from the bottom up, in which the people most affected have decision-making authority over their formations. Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health demonstrates why and how theory matters for knowledge production, policy, and practice in mental health, and it creates new imaginings of decolonized and democratized mental health systems, of abundant community-centred supports, and of a world where human differences are affirmed.