Citizens un-interrupted: Practices of inclusion by mental health service users

Inclusion, participation, and the recognition as being an equal is important for the well-being and resilience of all citizens. The notion of homo occupacio describes the persona of the citizen as the self-directed, selfinitiated occupational human who takes possession of his or her world through a repertoire of occupations located within the rules and norms of society. For those in society who have been labelled with a psychiatric diagnosis, the ability to participate and exercise the rights and responsibilities as citizens can be conditional, often interrupted and, at times, denied. Once labelled, service users report that they are regarded as the marginalised and excluded immanent Other; their status is then relegated to subject rather than citizen and political actor. Thus positioned on the margins of the democratic processes of the state, service users enter the state of exception as homo sacer, regarded as the outcast, the banned and dangerous Other, whereby the personal power of the citizen no longer seems to hold. This paper presents service users' stories of distressing exclusion that interrupted their rights to occupational justice, and marginalised them from occupation. The paper also presents the practices of inclusion that service users engaged in that restored their rights and responsibilities as occupied and active citizens. The successful stories of inclusion are framed within one of Isin's four domains of his citizenship theory: the extent of citizenship, and the rules and norms of inclusion and exclusion.