[The rights of consumers of mental health services: the tight knot of power, law and ethics.].
Over the past 25 years, in Québec as in the rest of the western world, "mental patients" have become "users" or "consumers", and laws and procedures have been developed ostensibly to make such change more than merely symbolic. This article suggests that for those users who most need the benefit of "rights", those rights themselves remain as symbolic as the change in terminology. Legal rights are empty gifts if those who receive them do not have the means to exercise them meaningfully. Concern for the legal rights of users must inevitably address the lack of power they experience within the mental health and justice systems. Research is urgently required in order to assess whether and how rights are experienced as concrete and empowering in the lives of users.
McCubbin
M
M
Cohen
D
D