Abstract

Integrating mental health care and consumer needs is a challenging, shifting process with decided historical trends resulting in a current consumer-driven movement that determines care. The variants with this are enormous and include the power differential between providers and patients, the policy-making political climate of health care, and the growing unwillingness of people to assume the role of patient just because they are suffering from a psychiatric disorder. Currently, in the United States, there is a growing move towards a requirement that consumer perspectives are the driving factor as services are organized and funded (Tomes, 2006).