In my best interests

Dave Burnside

Dave Burnside is a member of the Executive Leadership Team at Odyssey Auckland, New Zealand, working as the Lived Experience Lead.

As someone who comes from a background of mental health distress, addiction, homelessness and incarceration, I have been diagnosed and defined by systems, and ‘experts’ within those systems. Any basic human rights I had always seemed to come second to the needs of the system to define me, label me and spit me out the other end, of course, with my best interests at heart! In fact, my best interests were never the focus of attention, I was just sucked up into a process that had no heart for me. I look back and don’t see my rights to dignity, equality or mutual respect anywhere. I only see power, and a need for the system to validate itself, trampling on my rights in the process.

When I first spent time in a mental health institution, transferred there from prison at 16 years of age, the intention was that they would be able to help with my heroin addiction and my mental health. I had no say about the drugs that were administered without my knowledge, so I could be observed in seclusion for several days, and I didn’t have input into any plans that were hatched, of course, with my best interests at heart. I was just one of many others, who became embedded in that world, and who ultimately became lost.

No one ever told me back then that I had rights. No one told me how to challenge the breaches of my rights, how to challenge the stigma and discrimination I faced. I thought I deserved it all, I thought I was just ‘less than’ others. No one supported me to understand what I was entitled to and that I had a voice in the process. Has it really changed since then?

Many years later, I now work in mental health and addiction services in a lived experience role. I spent many years working as a peer support worker, and now, although qualified as a clinician, and with a Masters in Law, I see the power of the peer as vital in challenging the abuse of power that our systems wield. The peer voice is often lost in the mad scramble of the work we do, where outcomes and reports are written largely by the perpetrators of systemic abuse, hiding the true stories of human rights breaches, but of course, with their best interests at heart.

The medical model, the biopsychosocial approach has, for many including myself, not been the best way forward. I am reminded of the words of Professor David Best, from Leeds Trinity University, who states that giving people written information and brochures, is a criminal waste of dead trees, that psychiatrists are only slightly better than dead trees, and that peer support is where it’s at! I agree wholeheartedly. Psychiatric care, for me, never cared. It defined, diagnosed, and reported on me, but whatever the intentions, I never felt heard. The definitions, the diagnoses, the reports, they went on my file, they went to the courts, they were used to define me, often to sentence me and justify those sentences to imprisonment.

Luckily for me, it was in prison that I first encountered peer support, where I became inspired, where someone lit the spark of hope within me. From that spark, the flames of recovery grew, fuelled by more engagement with lived experience, people I connected with. I had a very good look at who I really was on my own terms. I started to think about who I wanted to be, and I became empowered to determine my own way forward, to decide what recovery was for me and make decisions based on that.

Research has found that lived experience approaches are just as effective, if not more so, than clinical approaches (DiClemente, 2011), and the ultimate aim is to have them working together, complementing each other’s strengths. Peer Supports have a natural alignment to social justice and advocating for human rights. They challenge the stigma and discrimination that distances people from their rights and play a key part in the consumer advocacy that can lead to sustained recovery and reconnection to communities.  

Now, 16 years in active recovery, I am able to challenge the stigma, the marginalization, the ‘othering’ and stand in my own version of myself. I can challenge breaches of human rights, my own rights, and others. I can challenge stigma and discrimination and advocate for myself, and for others. I’m not just an addict, I’m not just an offender, I’m not crazy! I’m me, I’m proud to be me, I can contribute to my community, and I have the right to determine what is in my best interests.

References

DiClemente, CC (2011). Project MATCH. In JC Norcross, GR VandenBos, & DK Freedheim (Eds.), History of psychotherapy: Continuity and change (pp. 395–401). American Psychological Association.
https://doi.org/10.1037/12353-018