Paper short abstract:

Based on a review of literature, we explore what normative and conceptual constructions of epistemic justice exist, and what sort of relational and structural work helps to do justice to the experiential knowledge of people with psychiatric illnesses.

Paper long abstract:

Despite literature showing the relevance of including experiential knowledge of care recipients in decision-making (Caron-Flinterman et al., 2005), this type of knowledge remains undervalued. Epistemic injustice has been used as a theoretical concept to show the power imbalances and structural practices that prioritize scientific and medical knowledge over experiential knowledge (Carel & Kidd, 2014). This is especially true for the knowledge of people with psychiatric illnesses, as sanism leads to discarding the knowledge of people deemed not ‘sane’ (Leblanc & Kinsella, 2016).

While there is an increasing amount of literature on epistemic injustice, we know little about what epistemic justice looks like and how to reach it even though this is crucial to do justice to people with psychiatric illnesses in their capacity as knowers. White (Beresford & Russo, 2022) defines epistemic justice as the moment when society considers people who have been deemed Mad credible witnesses to their own experiences and they are able to render intelligible to themselves and others their experiences of oppression. Yet, the requirements of what we might call epistemic justice are many and various (Fricker, 2013) and must include both institutional change as well as reflexivity of all knowers in decision-making processes.

In our contribution, we explore what normative and conceptual constructions of epistemic justice exist, and what sort of relational and structural work contributes to epistemic justice within mental health care. We draw on a review of literature on epistemic (in)justice and the role of the experiential knowledge of people with psychiatric illnesses.