Reconciliation is something we consumers and service providers need

by Allan Pinches,
Consumer Consultant for Mental Health.

RECONCILIATION is a word which features prominently in the nation’s public agenda and consciousness. I believe there are strong parallels that can be drawn between the reconciliation process involving Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians, and the need for reconciliation between mental health consumers and mental health service providers. And there would be many benefits from such a process.


Reconciliation in both the Indigenous/ non Indigenous and mental health areas would involve the building of bridges of UNDERSTANDING, TRUST, AND RESPECT between the relevant groups. The reconciliation debate of recent years refers to a proposed shift in power relations, in which a power elite learns to share power with a historically disempowered group, and discovers areas of mutual need, shared benefits of the new partnership and enrichment of their respective cultures.

Mental health consumers, whilst existing as an extremely diverse group, include many people of exceptional wisdom, creativity and insight, who often by painful necessity are exploring many heartfelt, alternative, community minded ways of being in the world. This kind of knowledge and experience would greatly enrich the culture and humanity of the mental health services they use and the wider society, if only the barriers of fear, ignorance and stigma could be torn down.

Mental health clinical and disability support service providers can help to build the much needed bridges between consumers and the wider community, by becoming more attuned to the knowledge, wisdom and deep humanity of people who have experienced mental illness. This is a major key for success in efforts to build in consumer participation in the planning and development of mental health services in recent years – with a notion of consumers and service providers working in partnership to improve the quality and effectiveness of mental health services. The peer support that naturally exists among consumers could be encouraged, built upon and resourced, to good effect.
It’s interesting how the microcosm often reflects the macrocosm, in almost a holographic way. In our society we all need reconciliation with what we might call our higher selves, in our relations with each other as individuals, in our communities, within our society, between nations and in our ecological relationship to the Earth.

The various camps have a deep need for each other, because, whether we are conscious of this or not, as human beings we are all connected and we are all in a myriad of ways inter-dependent. Seemingly in human societies and organisations, where rugged individualism currently rules, it is an all-too-easy and expedient option for those in power seek to control and coerce people rather than understanding them, listening to them, and responding to their needs and wants. It seems that people exist to serve the social - political - economic system, rather than the other way around, and most curiously, in the system, the "tail wags the dog."

Western science, technology and enterprise -- and some enlightened social interventions within a framework of self-determination and Community Development hold the potential to greatly enhance the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal communities. Just one small example is the way video making has been rapidly taken up by Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory as a community development tool, an educational device, and a force for reclaiming and promoting traditional culture and spirituality. The recent huge explosion in Aboriginal contributions to the media, the arts and popular culture are increasingly recognised as positive, healing and enriching to the whole society.

Similarly, we could propose that providing access for mental health consumers to video, publishing, community radio, public performance, the Internet, access to the media, and other means of communication are some ways to build bridges of social and cultural exchange. In turn, professionals’ knowledge of medical model psychiatry and psychology is greatly enhanced by a compassionate understanding of consumers in their social, spiritual, thinking and feeling dimensions. So much can be gained from an appreciation of the subtle realms of consciousness, which are rendered understandable and meaningful through the lived experience of individuals.

Australia’s non Indigenous population stands to gain enormous spiritual, cultural and human riches through cross communion with Aboriginal people and their communities – if all members of the dominant group can a muster the courage to move through the pain and emptiness inherent in the often difficult and despairing journey toward reconciliation and healing,. The first step is seeking to understand and own some of the collective responsibility for past wrongs.

Inherent in genuine reconciliation processes is the need to listen, and understand beyond differences. I think this need is reflected in social institutions as well, including governments, the media, community organisations, churches...or the mental health system.

So many of the problems in the world today can be sheeted home to our collective avoidance of submitting ourselves to moral and ethical self-examination and moving through often painful transformative processes that are needed if we are to find personal, social and political healing.

The revered explorer of the soul dimensions of psyche, Dr Carl Gustav Jung once observed that madness could most often be attributed to "the avoidance of legitimate suffering." I believe that this applies just as strongly, if not more so, to whole societies, not only individuals. And catastrophes such as the horrific events in America on September 11, 2001, make it all the more necessary for all people of the world, together with our elected leaders, to work through some of the moral and ethical dilemmas that stand between our current troubled reality and true reconciliation, peace and sustainability.

And we need to build a more empowerment and humanity into the way consumers experience mental health services. We need to place before each other the gifts of reconciliation.