Humanising Psychiatry and Mental Health Care


Book Description

This book explores, in depth, the link between modern psychiatric practice and the person-centred approach. It promotes an open dialogue between traditional rivals – counsellors and psychiatrists within the NHS – to assist greater understanding and improve practice. Easy to read and comprehend, it explains complex issues in a clear and accessible manner. The author is a full-time psychiatrist and qualified counsellor who offers a unique perspective drawing on personal experience. Humanising Psychiatry and Mental Health Care will be of significant interest and help to all mental health professionals including psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses, social care workers, occupational therapists, psychologists, person-centred counsellors and therapists. Health and social care policy makers and shapers, including patient groups, will also find it helpful and informative.




Humanising Mental Health Care in Australia


Book Description

Humanising Mental Health Care in Australia is a unique and innovative contribution to the healthcare literature that outlines the trauma-informed approaches necessary to provide a more compassionate model of care for those who suffer with mental illness. The impact of abuse and trauma is frequently overlooked in this population, to the detriment of both individual and society. This work highlights the importance of recognising such a history and responding humanely. The book explores the trauma-informed perspective across four sections. The first outlines theory, constructs and effects of abuse and trauma. The second section addresses the effects of abuse and trauma on specific populations. The third section outlines a diverse range of individual treatment approaches. The final section takes a broader perspective, examining the importance of culture and training as well as the organisation and delivery of services. Written in an accessible style by a diverse group of national and international experts, Humanising Mental Health Care in Australia is an invaluable resource for mental health clinicians, the community managed and primary health sectors, policy makers and researchers, and will be a helpful reference for people who have experienced trauma and those who care for them.




Humanizing Mental Illness


Book Description

Mental illness stigma is rooted in a perceived lack of agency, but stigma itself undermines agency. While most philosophical accounts of the matter are concerned with the question of how much agency a person with mental illness has, this book asks how we can enhance the agency of people with mental illness. Humanizing Mental Illness explains and explores these connections, arguing that all of us can and should adjust our social practices to enhance the agency of people with mental illness. This agency is complicated and nuanced, as it is often directly constrained due to a person's symptoms and indirectly constrained due to stigma. Abigail Gosselin, both a scholar in the field of social philosophy and a person with a psychiatric disability, illustrates the importance of social interaction for developing and exercising agency. By overcoming mental illness stigma and by adopting certain epistemic and moral virtues, we can interact with people who have mental illness in ways that help enhance their agency and enable them to flourish. Humanizing Mental Illness demonstrates that we need to challenge our explicit and implicit biases and learn to interact with mental illness in more intentional, supportive, and inclusive ways.




Severe Mental Illness in Primary Care


Book Description

There is increasing development and use of care pathways and a growing demand for guidance and advice on how to develop them. This practical guide meets this demand. It reflects the latest experience and incorporates best practice with contributions from highly experienced members of the National Pathways Association. It links well with the coming National Service Frameworks and National Institute of Clinical Excellence guidance. Case studies legal questions and common difficulties are all included and examined. Developing Care Pathways is in two parts: the handbook which defines and describes pathways and the roles of healthcare professionals involved with them and the tool kit which provides a detailed step-by-step guide to developing a care pathway. This work is essential reading for managers and clinicians in organisations developing care pathways throughout secondary and primary care.




Beyond Clinical Dehumanisation towards the Other in Community Mental Health Care


Book Description

Beyond Clinical Dehumanisation Toward the Other in Community Mental Health Care offers a rare and intimate portrayal of the moral process of a mental health clinician that interrogates the intractable problem of systemic dehumanisation in community mental health care and looks to the notion of "wonder" and the visionary relational ethics of Emmanuel Levinas for a possible cure. An interdisciplinary study with transdisciplinary aspirations, this book contributes an original and compelling voice to the emerging therapeutic conversation attempting to re-imagine and transcend the objectifying constraints of the dominant discourse and the reductive world view that drives it. Chapters bring into dialogue the fields of community mental health care, psychology, psychology and the Other, the philosophy of wonder, Levinasian ethics, clinical ethics, the moral research of autoethnography and the medical humanities, to consider the defilement of the vulnerable help seeker, the moral injury of the clinician and look for answers beyond. This book is an ethical primer for mental health professionals, researchers, educators, advocates and service users working to re-imagine and heal a broken system by challenging the underpinnings of entrenched dehumanisation and standing with those they "serve".




Person Centered Psychiatry


Book Description

This book presents an authoritative overview of the emerging field of person-centered psychiatry. This perspective, articulating science and humanism, arose within the World Psychiatric Association and aims to shift the focus of psychiatry from organ and disease to the whole person within their individual context. It is part of a broader person-centered perspective in medicine that is being advanced by the International College of Person-Centered Medicine through the annual Geneva Conferences held since 2008 in collaboration with the World Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the International Council of Nurses, the International Federation of Social Workers, and the International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations, among 30 other international health institutions. In this book, experts in the field cover all aspects of person-centered psychiatry, the conceptual keystones of which include ethical commitment; a holistic approach; a relationship focus; cultural sensitivity; individualized care; establishment of common ground among clinicians, patients, and families for joint diagnostic understanding and shared clinical decision-making; people-centered organization of services; and person-centered health education and research.




Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law


Book Description

Mental health law is a rapidly evolving area of practice and research, with growing global dimensions. This work reflects the increasing importance of this field, critically discussing key issues of controversy and debate, and providing up-to-date analysis of cutting-edge developments in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia. This is a timely moment for this book to appear. The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) sought to transform the landscape in which mental health law is developed and implemented. This Convention, along with other developments, has, to varying degrees, informed sweeping legislative reforms in many countries around the world. These and other developments are discussed here. Contributors come from a wide range of countries and a variety of academic backgrounds including ethics, law, philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology. Some contributions are also informed by lived experience, whether in person or as family members. The result is a rich, polyphonic, and sometimes discordant account of what mental health law is and what it might be. The Handbook is aimed at mental health scholars and practitioners as well as students of law, human rights, disability studies, and psychiatry, and campaigners and law- and policy-makers.




Serious Mental Illness


Book Description

Practical and evidence-based, this unique book is the first comprehensive text focused on person-centered approaches to people with serious mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It reflects a range of views and findings regarding assessment, treatment, rehabilitation, self-help, policy-making, education and research. It is highly recommended for all healthcare professionals, students, researchers and educators involved in general practice, psychiatry, nursing, social work, clinical psychology and therapy. Healthcare service providers, and policy makers and shapers, will find the book's wide-ranging, multi-professional approach enlightening. 'Serious Mental Illness reflects a continued distancing from the outmoded and unsubstantiated belief that people with severe mental illnesses could not recover, and that they would respond positively only to goals and treatment plans chosen, designed and implemented by providers in order to prevent their further deterioration. Anyone with an interest in the concept of person-centered approaches will discover new ideas in this book. Indeed, anyone with an interest in person-centered approaches has to read this book. Not only is it the first such book on person-centered approaches, but it will serve as the gold standard in this topic area for years to come.' William A Anthony, in the Foreword




Communicating Quality and Safety in Health Care


Book Description

In response to the growing emphasis on clinicians' capacity to practise effective communication, Communicating Quality and Safety in Health Care provides real-time communication scenarios and interprofessional case studies. The book engages healthcare trainees from across medicine, nursing and allied health services in a comprehensive and probing discussion of the communication demands that confront today's healthcare teams. This book explains the role of communication in mental health, emergency medicine, intensive care and a wide range of other health service and community care contexts. It emphasises the ways in which patients and clinicians communicate, and how clinicians communicate with one another. The case studies explain why and how communication is critical to good care and healing. Each chapter analyses real-life practice situations, encourages the learner to ask probing questions about these situations and sets out the principal components and strategies of good communication.




The Interactive World of Severe Mental Illness


Book Description

In our society, medication is often seen as the treatment for severe mental illness, with psychotherapy a secondary treatment. However, quality social interaction may be as important for the recovery of those with severe mental illness as are treatments. This volume makes this point while describing the emotionally moving lives of eight individuals with severe mental illness as they exist in the U.S. mental health system. Offering social and psychological insight into their experiences, these stories demonstrate how patients can create meaningful lives in the face of great difficulties. Based on in-depth interviews with clients with severe mental illness, this volume explores which structures of interaction encourage growth for people with severe mental illness, and which trigger psychological damage. It considers the clients’ relationships with friends, family, peers, spouses, lovers, co-workers, mental health professionals, institutions, the community, and the society as a whole. It focuses specifically on how structures of social interaction can promote or harm psychological growth, and how interaction dynamics affect the psychological well-being of individuals with severe mental illness.