Institutional Epistemic Isolation in Psychiatric Healthcare

Within the last decade, epistemic injustice has been a valuable framework for those working on exposing oppressive practices within the healthcare system. As this work has evolved, new terminology has been added to the epistemic injustice literature to bring to light previously obscured epistemic harms in healthcare practices. This paper aims to explore an important concept that has not received the attention it deserves: epistemic isolation. By developing Ian Kidd and Havi Carel’s concept of epistemic isolation, a new range of epistemic harms are brought to the fore, as some of the most marginalised in our society are forced to operate from positions of ignorance. In the words of Kidd and Carel, epistemic isolation occurs in ‘situations where a person or group lacks the knowledge of, or means of access to, particular information; for instance, if they live within a politically repressive society which forbids access to the necessary sources of information in order to protect the government’s hegemony’ (183–184). This paper will demonstrate that such epistemic isolation is uniquely devastating for those with psychiatric illness, exacerbating their already challenging circumstances.