4/ Editorial introductions

In chapter eighteen Peter Morrall considers some further issues in relation to empowerment, starting from the point that the empowerment of users and consumers of health services has been on the policy agenda for a number of years, while health service administrators and personnel are now specifically required to consult with users and carers. The rhetoric and reality of empowerment for people with enduring mental disorder are, however, clearly distinct. Much of the interpersonal communication and therapy practises of mental health workers can be experienced as disempowering. Can clinical sociology provide users with avenues through which real power may be gained by addressing the origins rather than the symptoms of disempowerment? Or is there simply nowhere to start in the face of issues such as homelessness, the removal of mentally ill from GP's waiting lists and other structurally disempowering situations? Is the provision of training and awareness-heightening initiatives for mental health practitioners from the realm of academic sociology, the traditional bastion of radical critique of societal institutions, an important initiative? Or is it just another example of the sort of crude territorial acquisitiveness and professional imperialism (clinical sociology) that academic sociology sets out to critique?