Controlling Insanity

Duncan Cameron worked as a layperson Community Member on the Mental Health Tribunal in Victoria, Australia, from 2008 to 2023. Formerly an instrumental music teacher, Duncan has lived experience of both compulsory and voluntary psychiatric treatment.

The Mental Health Tribunal is mandated to uphold the rights of persons with mental illness. It does this by conducting hearings to determine whether patients on Treatment Orders under the state's Mental Health law meet the criteria for further compulsory treatment. Tribunal divisions consist of a legal member, a psychiatrist or medical member and a community member.

In this book Duncan mines his experience of both his Tribunal work and treatment for mental illness. He explores issues relevant to mental health and patients' rights and gives us a unique window in to some of the broader social implications in the lives of the mentally ill.

Psychiatry has only recently recognised and validated the 'lived experience' perspective - one particularly important in the regulation and oversight of limitations on rights and freedoms imposed by compulsory psychiatric treatment.

Astute, thought-provoking, humorous and poignant at times, Duncan's book is a timely contribution to the emerging lived experience canon coming, as it does, in the wake of a Royal Commission into Victoria's "broken" mental health system.

Dettagli