Empowerment or Holding the Child Responsible? An Australian Recovery-Oriented Mental Health Policy Analysis

Abstract

Abstract Recovery, as a concept is internationally recognised as a means to empower children to manage their own mental health. Recovery-oriented mental health policy production and service delivery in many Western countries, however, occurs in a discursive field influenced by biomedical and neo-liberal discourses. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate an Australian policy—'A National Framework for Recovery-Oriented Mental Health Services: Guide for Practitioners and Providers', to critically analyse the competing versions of recovery. The findings reveal ideological slippages at work and show the operation of biomedical, developmental, collaborative, empowerment and responsibilisation discourses that compete in this mental health policy. This article shows how social workers require critical analysis to discern the consequences of different understandings of recovery in the child and youth mental health field. Despite the collaborative and strengths-based language of recovery, the analysis demonstrates the need to recognise the fine line between empowerment and the neo-liberal imperative for children to self-manage their mental health concerns.