Table 2.

Stages of dialectical-relational critical discourse analysis.

Analytical Stage	Description
Stage 1: Describe the social wrong and its semiotic aspects	This analysis focussed on the social wrong being the erosion of consent towards people experiencing mental health issues identified as requiring of involuntary treatment. Specifically, we examined how the act and guide shape involuntary treatment and positions involuntary patients, including those who enact the act (such as physicians, nurses and police officers).
Stage 2: Identify obstacles to addressing the social wrong	Within this stage the obstacles to addressing dominant discourses within the object of analysis are investigated. We considered the social and historical influences that shaped the conceptualisation of ‘mental disorders’, including the role of biomedicine, medical authority, psychiatry, ableism and the positioning of people experiencing mental health issues. Within this stage the selected texts were analysed and findings from this stage identified two discourses, ‘the involuntary patient’ and ‘the need for protection’.
Stage 3: Consider whether the social order ‘needs’ the social wrong	This stage explored how the current social order ‘needs’ the social wrong. The social wrong involves the problematic positioning of the patient and the outcomes of this positioning, being the exacerbation of social and economic marginalisation. The authors analysed how involuntary treatment functions to centralise control and maintain the dominance of biomedicine, as well as the individualising of people experiencing mental health issues as pathological, obscuring the need to address structural determinants of mental health such as housing and income.
Stage 4: Identification of possible ways past the obstacles	In this stage the analysis focussed on identifying alternatives to dominant conceptualisations and approaches to mental health practice and treatment, and how these alternatives might reduce coercion.