Editing Empowerment (section)

===Criticism===
Before there can be the finding that a particular group requires empowerment and that therefore their self-esteem needs to be consolidated on the basis of awareness of their strengths, there needs to be a deficit diagnosis usually carried out by experts assessing the problems of this group. The fundamental asymmetry of the relationship between experts and clients is usually not questioned by empowerment processes. It also needs to be regarded critically, in how far the empowerment approach is really applicable to all patients/clients. It is particularly questionable whether [mentally ill] people in acute crisis situations are in a position to make their own decisions. According to Albert Lenz, people behave primarily regressive in acute crisis situations and tend to leave the responsibility to professionals.<ref>Albert Lenz: ''Empowerment und Ressourcenaktivierung – Perspektiven für die psychosoziale Praxis.''</ref> It must be assumed, therefore, that the implementation of the empowerment concept requires a minimum level of communication and reflectivity of the persons involved.

Another criticism is that empowerment implies that the drive for change comes from an external person. For example, in healthcare, a patient being encouraged by their doctor to track their symptoms and adjust their medication accordingly would be empowerment, where as a patient deciding on their own that they wanted to improve their medication regimen and thus started tracking would be an example of '''self-empowerment'''. A recently coined term, self-empowerment "describes patients’ and informal caregivers’ power to perform activities that are not mandated by health care and to take control over their own lives and self-management with increased self-efficacy and confidence".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Scott Duncan |first1=Therese |title=Patients' self-empowerment : patients and informal caregivers taking the lead |date=2023 |publisher=Karolinska Institutet |isbn=978-91-8016-891-5 |url=https://openarchive.ki.se/xmlui/handle/10616/48476 |access-date=5 February 2024}}</ref>