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There has been growing interest about procedural justice in mental health tribunals. A process considered procedurally just increases adherence to treatment, increases compliance with judicial decisions and allows efficient community reintegration. Yet, little is known about how procedural justice is carried out and the role of professionals in its implementation. Stemming from the results of a critical ethnography of the Ontario Review Board, in this article we examine how procedural justice materializes during Review Board hearings and the role of nurses in this materialization. We do so by leveraging Goffman’s work on total institutions and institutional ceremonies. Our findings suggest that nurses participate in activities that provide a perception of procedural justice, rather than serve their patients’ right to true procedural justice. We conclude by recommending that nurses engage in reflections about the distal effects of their clinical practice to broaden the possibilities for resistance within the forensic psychiatric system.

Going through Research Ethics Boards (REB) and being held accountable to the highest ethical standards to conduct research with human subjects is commonplace. The goal of such a process helps ensure the selection and achievements not only of morally acceptable ends, but also of acceptable means to those ends when conducting research. Ultimately, REBs must pass judgment about the acceptability of harms and benefi ts to participants as they relate to research processes and outcomes. In this paper, we explore the implication of integrating “institutional reputation” as a category of analysis in the ethical review process. Informed by a recent Research Ethics Board (REB) review, we seek to engage with the readership in a constructive refl ection on the concept of institutional reputation as a source of confl icting interests in research ethics review process.

Éditorial / Editorial

Drawing on a situational analysis of a recent anti-stigma campaign in psychiatry (Defeat Denial: Help Defeat Mental Illness) this paper seeks to engage with the reader on the use of an expert discourse that focuses on the brain and its disruption as a way to address stigma associated with mental illness. To begin, we briefly highlight key statistics regarding the impact of mental illness in Canada and introduce the concept of stigma. We then introduce the Defeat Denial media campaign and describe the analytical process employed for this paper - Situational Analysis with a specific focus on discourse. We then expand on the use of the expert discourse in the awareness campaign by making connections with Rose’s concept of biological citizen and, in the final sections, present recent studies on stigma that highlight the paradox and contested construction of the (bio)psychiatric self

Éditorial / Editorial

Éditorial / Editorial

Éditorial / Editorial