Benevolent othering: Speaking positively about mental health service users

Mental health service users are increasingly being spoken of in positive terms including, for example, in anti-stigma, recovery, consumer participation, and co-production discourses. This article situates these discourses in the context of a larger discursive phenomenon—‘benevolent othering’—in which others are spoken of in ways that are ostensibly positive, but that function to maintain the subordination of mental health service users. The concept of benevolent othering emerged from my doctoral research, based on an analysis of a dataset of more than 600 texts (encountered in public space over a 3-year period), ranging from activist posters calling for same-sex marriage to charity billboards seeking donations for women and children ‘in desperate need.’ This article explores benevolent othering in the context of contemporary mental health discourses, grounded in a textual analysis of a series of billboards produced by an Australian mental health organization, and then extended into benevolent othering within co-production discourses.