Part Two: The Mental Health Promotion
Practitioner as an Agent of Self-Determination
Presented by Dr Lewis Williams, Director,
Prairie Region Health Promotion Research Centre
August 16, 2005
Mental Health Promotion: Identity, Power & Culture Summer School 2005

• This presentation is based on
Lewis Williams’ PhD research, referenced on the last slide.

Using Your Power Transformatively:
Knowing Your Own Practice Terrain
• In what ways do key cultural, professional and organizational forms of power shape my practice?
• How might I exercise agency within my own practice – i.e. the use of cultural, professional and organizational power in ways that increase self-determination and mental well-being?

• The transformative use of power can be thought of as those who have access to more power, particularly institutional forms, using it in ways to increase the power and choices of those who have less access to power.
• Practitioners have many opportunities to use their power this way.

• The challenges of working across different identity and cultural locations
• Drawing on the experience of marginal identities

• How do my cultural identities and life experiences shape my values and perceptions of the world and people within it?
• What forms of power do I have access to and how do these influence the expression of my own cultural identities within my work?
• How do these power-culture dynamics influence my ability to work with people, particularly those of different cultural identities in ways that increase self-determination and mental wellbeing?

• Unconsciously wearing your professional power
• The transformative use of professional power and the reflective contract

• How does my professional training conceptualize my role with people I work with?
• What are the power relations inherent in my professional role?
• How might I exercise my professional power to facilitate increased selfdetermination and mental well-being?

• Between Organization and community: dual accountability
• Power-culture and the health promoter as translator from multiple and shifting positions

External Agency Terrain External Agency Terrain
(Community context)
(Institutional context)
Internal Agency Terrain
(MHP practitioner)
Knowledge systems
Western/Indigenous
Feminist, critical
Public policies
Treatment, prevention
Promotion, development
Institutional power
Cultural and power base of organization
Professional systems
Which professional systems predominate
Consciousness
Knowledge, critical thinking, spontaneity & intuition
Identity
Sense of self & herstory/history, selfesteem, sense of belonging
Cultures
Practitioners world views & cultural affiliations
Professional power
Professional knowledge and credentials
Institutional status and role
Role and position within organization
Globalization
Global movement of capital & goods.
Globalization of culture via print & electronic media
Socio-cultural identities & statuses of groups
Personal capacities, social, cultural identities & statuses
Mental health capacities
Access to employment, income, housing, culture, language, land, healthcare, etc
MHP practice context
Locale of interactions and associated rules/norms
Social and organizational networks
Degree of social cohesion, strength of horizontal & vertical networks
Dominant institutions & social structures
Cultural systems transmitted & degree of power base
Williams, L. (2005).

• Which cultural norms and values do the policies and practices of the organization
I work for represent?
• How does the organization understand mental health promotion work?
• What are the opportunities and challenges inside and outside the organization for implementing MHP practice and policy?

• Taking account of cultural, professional and organizational power you have access to
• Constructs / theory behind practice
• Face Validity
• Transformative use of power

• Williams, L. (2005). The Mental Health Promotion Practitioner as an agent of self-determination: Reflections on Practice. Paper prepared for the Prairie Region Health Promotion Research Centre Summer
School, University of Saskatchewan.
• Williams, L. (2001). Identity, culture and power: Frameworks for
Self-determination of Communities at the Margins. Unpublished PhD
Thesis, Massey University: Auckland.