Enhancing active citizenship for persons with psychosocial disabilities

ABSTRACT

By the adoption of the United Nation Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, many countries have committed to providing conditions for persons with disabilities to actively participate in the community. This article explores the meaning of active citizenship for persons with psychosocial disabilities and focuses in particular on the role of the state. Illustrated with examples from Sweden, the analysis underlines the complexity of the relationship between mental health and society by taking into account several models of disability, different conceptions of citizenship and the broader socio-economic context. We suggest that the use of a dynamic approach to psychosocial disabilities is appropriate for dealing with the manifold issue of mental health in welfare states. In conclusion, we point at important challenges facing the realization of full inclusion and citizenship in contemporary societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Active citizenship
• psychosocial disability
• mental health
• UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities
• welfare state

Acknowledgements

This article was written as part of the project ‘DISCIT: Making persons with disabilities full citizens’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marie Sépulchre is a PhD student at the Sociology Department of Uppsala University, Sweden.

Rafael Lindqvist is a Professor in Sociology at the Sociology Department of Uppsala University, Sweden.

Notes

1. The liberal conception of citizenship builds on the work of T.H. Marshall (1992) and John Rawls (1972) cf. Miller (2000, 43).

2. In this article, we limit our discussion to the question of full citizenship inside a country, but there is also much to say about the relationship between mental health and immigration (see e.g. Menzies et al. 1998; Sayce 2000, 56ff.).

3. Rationality is still an important element of citizenship and several authors have argued (see e.g. Arneil 2009; Dowse 2009) for reconsidering the foundations of citizenship so as to include all individuals in society, and in particular persons with intellectual impairments.

4. http://www.un.org/disabilities/latest.asp?id=169 (retrieved 9 June 2015).

5. For a discussion about old and new risks in relation to the European welfare state see also (Taylor-Gooby 2004).

6. Examples of such campaigns in Sweden include PSYKE in 1999 and (H)järnkoll from 2009 to 2014, which were conducted in collaboration with the Swedish Agency for Disability Policy and the Swedish umbrella organisation for psychosocial disabilities (National Coordination for Mental Health, NSPH).

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Communities' Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 320079.