What is the purpose of government (and public mental health services)?

The below is drawn from the Human Rights from the Top online course, focused on supporting leaders and managers to embed human rights in their public mental health services.

What is the point of government??

Maybe you have asked yourself this question. As part of a public mental health provider, you are doing the government's work.

For many of us, we ask governments to enable?a fair system of cooperation. Do governments always live up to this standard? Certainly not. Does this avoid the darker side of governments and the nefarious things they often do? To be sure, yes. But it does articulate?the ideal?that many of us seek from governments. This foundational idea comes from political liberalism, the philosophy that emerged in the 17th and 18th century.

Whether we read deeply about political philosophy or not, many of us understand implicitly that the role of government is to let people live their own good life to the greatest extent possible.

As Lefebvre notes, our contemporary liberal systems of governance are not defined by a strict version of common good or a shared end, like other historical approaches:

Whatever their vast differences, the ancient Greek polis, medieval Christian kingdom, and modern fascist state all work on this model. They understand the purpose of society, and hence social cooperation and coordination, in terms of achieving some shared good or end, whether cultivating certain excellences (ancient Greeks), saving souls and bringing about the kingdom of God (medieval Christians), or securing the good of an exclusive people (modern fascists).?A liberal society is not like that. Its only shared end is, so to speak, ironic: to maintain itself as a fair system of cooperation so that members can pursue, within reasonable limits,?their own conceptions of the good life. [my emphasis added]

How we conceive of government's role directly relates to what functions and purposes government-funded services should enable, including public mental health services.?

Are public mental health systems here to define the good life for someone, or create the conditions to enable them to define and live that life on their own terms? Conceiving of a mental health system, and broader mental health policy, as centred on "treating mental illness" is increasingly incompatible with this vision. "Illness" and "health" are, in many respects, bound up in unspoken and unacknowledged assumptions of what a 'good life' is. These unacknowledged assumptions can privilege predominant cultural perspectives over others, including different First Nations ways of knowing and being.

A good life for people will look different, and our system should be equipped to help people author and arrive at that vision. For many, this will include influencing the social, economic and environmental factors that determine whether we find ourselves in trauma, distress or crisis. For some of us, a good life will be the absence or reduction of 'symptoms' of 'mental illness'. While for others, it will be living with unusual experiences while remaining true to our internal values, irrespective of whether we are in distress or crisis.?

There is an important role for medical and other specialties. But it is a subordinate rather than subordinating role. The role of mental health professionals is in service of someone's good life, not in dictating what it looks like.

A system that dictates the good life is illiberal and violent

A system that dictates what someone's self-image and vision is or should be is inherently violent and incompatible with this picture of government. Instead, any government or mental health system should, as described by Victorian consumer leader William Moon, enable:

A good life, as determined by me.

The bad news is that much of our public mental health system is rooted in dated ideas that dictate rather than listen people's conception of the good life. We may not realise this violence if we work in the system, because it is the water we swim in. The good news is that human rights provides a framework to identify these errors, listen better and create the conditions for this self-authorship and self-actualisation.

That is why human rights matter. They allow people to author and?realise the good life, on their own terms. They will help you serve this noble end.

Learn more

• Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971) ?
• Chandler, Daniel, Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? (Penguin UK, 2023)
• Lefebvre, Alexander, Liberalism as a way of life, (Princeton Press AUS, 2024)