This paper examines the factors that shape the political agency of
psychiatric service users/survivors. I begin by outlining an
Arendtian framework for thinking about political agency and its
sources. I then use this framework to explore the politically empowering and disempowering factors that users/survivors face, drawing
upon evidence from the writings of user/survivor activists and
organisations, newspaper articles, and psychiatric professional publications, published in the UK between 2006 and 2016. The insights
of this examination are of wider interest for two reasons. Firstly,
they elucidate the obstacles to political action facing the growing
number of people diagnosed with mental disorders. Secondly, they
suggest what a future in which politics is increasingly fought out in
medical terms means for citizens’ political agency generally.