Invisible walls: madness, distress and the boundaries of credibility

This paper describes a conceptual model for thinking about different understandings of mental health and illness. I use this model to identify tensions that exist in mental health policy and practice in Australia, and some of the consequences that flow from these. I argue that in Australia, disciplinary and service cultures are grounded in differing and unarticulated assumptions about the meaning of service users‘ experience. These differences create barriers to communication between practitioners working in different service types. They also make it difficult for service users, carers and newcomers to the sector to make sense of what they hear. Unarticulated assumptions construct invisible walls, marking the boundaries that separate views that can be regarded as credible in conversations about mental health, from those that cannot.