Overcoming Factionalism in Serious Mental Illness Policy Making: A Counter-Perspective

Atterbury and Jones discuss the article by Smith and Sisti on how to overcome factionalism in policy making for people with serious mental illness. They have several interlinked concerns. First, by focusing on "factionalism" as a major driver of failures to adequately address the problem of serious mental illness in the US, Smith and Sisti ignore the historical antecedents that have generated profound ethical, epistemic, and policy divides. Moreover, by uncritically invoking evidence-based research (and policy) as a seemingly uncontroversial point of departure for democratic deliberation, they present their concern as one open to democratically valued differences while deploying arguments that first subsume and then expel the voices of those who, through a priori determination, seem to be deemed unreasonable.