Dangerous Discourses: Masculinity, Coercion, and Psychiatry

In British Columbia, the introduction of modified Assertive Community Treatment Teams (ACT), a form of multi-disciplinary community-based treatment, recently began to include police as part of their professional complement. This chapter explores the intersections of masculinity, psychiatric diagnosis, and discourses of dangerousness as they play out in coercive practices in community-based settings. We expose the ways in which these damaging practices crop up in new and innovative ways in community-based mental health, giving lie to the promise of recovery and person-centred models of mental health care. We contextualize our discussion through a historical examination of the role of psychiatric confinement and its links to colonialism and intersecting forms of oppression and discuss the implications of ‘new’ forms of psychiatric violence and coercion for the lives of men diagnosed with mental illness.