Psychiatric System Survivors and Emancipatory research: Issues, overlaps and differences

The relations between survivors and disability and between the survivors' and disabled people's movements are complex and there is little agreement about them. For example, there was only one mention of survivors in Jane Campbell and Mike Oliver's major examination of disability politics and the only organisation referred to is an organisation for mental health service users (Campbell and Oliver, 1996). Jenny Morris's exploration of feminism and disability on the other hand, included a chapter by a woman survivor, highlighting the links with disability and the disabled people's movement (McNamara, 1996). Some disabled people do not see survivors as disabled, because they do not have an impairment or their situation may not be permanent, while others do. Some survivors do not see themselves as disabled because they associate disability with the medicalisation of their distress. There are also fears and anxieties among survivors and disabled people about being associated with the negatives linked with the other group.