The importance of being listened to: epistemic justice, children and mental illness

Epistemic Injustice, Children and Mental Illness - Edward Harcourt & Kate Martin

The paper argues that the experiences of health services both of children and of the mentally ill challenge some formulations of the notion of epistemic injustice, and proposes an alternative formulation.

A form of epistemic injustice - testimonial injustice - has wide application in contexts where race and gender stereotypes operate in limiting, or alternatively inflating, a person’s credibility. There is evidence that (not) being listened to affects service users’ satisfaction with mental health services, and the services’ therapeutic efficacy. However, some formulations of testimonial injustice suggest that only fully rational adults meet the standard for being knowers, and therefore for suffering epistemic injustice. Intuitively, however, that is just what children and the mentally ill do suffer – though not always in the same way - when they complain of not being listened to. We suggest that the notion of testimonial injustice either needs to be refashioned so as to capture these cases, or that it is not the right notion to capture them at all.

Edward Harcourt has been a member of the Oxford Philosophy Faculty and a Fellow of Keble College since 2005. He is also Director of Research, Strategy and Innovation
at the Arts and Humanities Research Council.