The social location of need – surveying psychiatric disability in the community

The majority of studies related to the needs of individuals with psychiatric disabilities focus on their meeting with, and use of, the traditional mental health system. Environmentally relative conceptions of disability have only shown limited success in expanding the views of the field of community psychiatry to include social and organizational contexts. Swedish disability policy emphasizes the individual's ability to participate in community life and may therefore be said to reflect a social approach to disability, in contrast to an exclusively medical perspective that focuses on deficits and the individual's need for psychiatrically defined services. In this study, inventories of need for people with psychiatric disabilities, a legislated responsibility of the social service system in Sweden, were completed for three municipalities. Results indicated that these individuals resist psychiatrically defined categories as they seek supports based on their own experience of need in the community.