Good Intentions Overruled: A Critique of Empowerment in the Routine Organization of Mental Health Services

Robert B. MacIntyre is head of the Centre for Relationship Therapy and
Education in Orangeville, Ontario.

Research into the workings of mental-health-care organizations tend to
be replete with statistical analysis but lacking a sense of how those
organizations affect the persons directly involved. This book, based on
the author’s doctoral thesis, focuses on the experiences of
occupational therapists working in three different Maritime hospitals.
It shows how the attempts of these therapists to help clients or
patients are frustrated by a variety of organizational assumptions and
structures. The intentions of health-care workers to empower individuals
in mental and emotional distress are being “overruled” or subverted
by administrative concerns. This provocative study should be of interest
to anyone dealing with health care in general and mental health care in
particular, whether as a user of these services, a professional, or an
administrator.