Patient participation as discursive practice: A critical discourse analysis of Danish mental healthcare

Patient participation is one of the most prevalent focus areas in the Danish healthcare debate. Patient participation is generally presented as a fundamental democratic right, and is stated in an objective language with legal requirements for healthcare profes-sionals to ensure that patients systematically participate in their own courses of care and treatment. In the research literature, it is not clear what is meant by ‘patient par-ticipation’, and several discourses on patient participation exist side by side. This study explores how discourses of patient participation unfold and are at play in the articula-tions in official legal and political documents and patient records relating to a Danish psychiatric context. The documents and patient records have been analyzed using a Fairclough-inspired critical discourse approach which is concerned with how power is exercised through language. The research findings show that patient participation within Danish psychiatric healthcare is governed within a neoliberal discourse where underlying discourses; discourse of biomedicine, paternalism, management, evidence and ethics of care are embedded, and a discourse that seems to ascribe stigmatizing traits to mentally ill patients.