Experiential knowledge in mental health care: A coherent concept?

Abstract

This chapter provides an analysis of experiential knowledge in mental health care from an epistemological perspective. It starts by offering a sketch of what this phenomenon entails in contemporary mental health-care practice. It reviews some recent worries that the conceptual foundation of this practice is unclear and goes on to provide a more fine-grained analysis to substantiate these worries. In particular, it explicates a tension that is inherent to experiential knowledge: the concept appears to presuppose both that experiential knowledge is grounded in lived experience as well as that it has a certain generalizability. The chapter zooms in on both requirements and shows that there is a trade-off, such that increasing generalizability comes at the expense of being grounded in lived experience. The chapter closes by outlining several avenues for future research and by situating the analysis in relation to adjacent debates in epistemology.