Autoethnographic reflections on mental distress and medication management: Conceptualising the biomedical and recovery models of mental health

This article uses autoethnography to explore the author’s lived experiences of mental distress and how she has conceptualised and explained these symptoms to herself using both the biomedical and recovery models of care. Autoethnography is a process of reflection that enables connection between the personal and the political. Experiences of mental distress are recounted alongside the decision to reduce medication. This personal experience is then explored in the context of the limited evidence base on the effectiveness of reducing medication and the situation in which prescribers often feel reluctant to recommend and support service users in these choices. Shared decision-making in medication management is introduced which is an approach which draws on the models of recovery and co-production, challenging traditional biomedical approaches which locate the prescriber as expert. Moreover, the radical service user led model is highlighted, within which, the Hearing Voices Network and Open Dialogue offer alternative approaches which promote co-production and empowerment. The author connects the personal to the political and reflects on her dual identity as an expert-by-experience and social work academic. She details how she has drawn on biomedical explanations to describe her distress yet has been challenged by the recovery model throughout her journey of recovery. She concludes that rationalising her own position, in identifying herself as an academic and expert-by-experience is an important step in challenging notions of expertise and approaches to mental health care.