The rights and responsibilities of citizenship for service users: some terms and conditions apply.
What is known about the subject? Citizenship is an important yet largely overlooked concept within psychiatric and mental health nursing practice Many service users are subject to legally mandated restrictions that place conditions on their rights and responsibilities as citizens. What this paper adds to existing knowledge? Even though service users have legal status as citizens, they continue to experience many conditions on their rights and responsibilities. Concerns about services users' trustworthiness and doubts about their levels of insight impact on their status as full citizens. What are the implications for practice? Nurses' understandings of the conditions placed on the citizenship rights and responsibilities of service users will ensure inclusive and less restrictive care and treatment Integration of the principles of therapeutic reciprocity and procedural justice within practice will help nurses balance both the rights of services users and legal restrictions on their liberty and autonomy



BACKGROUND
Service users have long been lobbying for equal participation as citizens, yet citizenship is an important and largely overlooked concept within nursing education and practice.


OBJECTIVE
The study explored service users' understandings of their rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the conditions placed on these.


METHODS
A total of 17 service users participated in semi-structured interviews. Isin's theory of the content of citizenship was used to analyze the data using a framework approach.


RESULTS
Service users experience conditional citizenship that includes barriers to their participation and their rights and responsibilities that others in society enjoy.


CONCLUSIONS
When the world of the service user is constructed through the language of the biomedical model, nurses may unwittingly reinforce psychiatric labels and thus perpetuate the stereotype that service users lack the competence to fully enact their rights and responsibilities.


CONCLUSIONS
When providing care, nurses should incorporate the notion of therapeutic jurisprudence and the principles of reciprocity, procedural justice and the implementation of advanced directives to reduce conditions on service users' status as citizens.
Helen Hamer & Associates Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand.
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Hamer
School of Health, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT, Australia.
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Finlayson
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D008605:Mental Health Services; D028642:Persons with Psychiatric Disorders / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D055815:Young Adult
citizenship, conditions; reciprocity; responsibilities; rights; service users