Mental Health Uncertainty and Inevitability


Book Description

This book offers original knowledge, debate, and understanding from frontline fieldwork data and the relations between mental health difficulties, mental healthcare provision, and social theory. Dominant discourse of the last half century has followed a medical perspective. This has marginalised contributions from social science. Furthermore purely medical approaches to mental healthcare have profound shortcomings. Thus, this book draws upon innovative research findings to rejuvenate the relationship between psychiatry and social science. It frames this by reference to certain inevitable and uncertain elements of mental health which characterise this field. Over nine chapters the volume is a unique contribution to several intersecting areas of intellectual enterprise, research, and learning — as well as a source of insight into how mental health practice and policy might be modified and improved. As a result, it appeals to a wide range of audiences including social scientists, mental health practitioners, mental health researchers, social theorists, mental health service users, and policy-makers.




Managing Uncertainty in Mental Health Care


Book Description

"The degree of complexity of the brain, mind and the environments in which humans live, would predict that mental health clinicians work in a perpetual state of uncertainty. That prediction would be wrong. To the contrary, in clinical practice our brains exhibit the same pedestrian bias towards irrational certainty. 1-5 Given the degree of complexity in the field of mental health, it is remarkable that we clinicians can assist anyone at all. Our professional training ratifies the scientific method in an attempt to protect us and those we treat from unwarranted certainty. Current training, however, appears to be inadequate to this task. The assessment and management of mental disorders, across specialists and non-specialists alike, is associated with ubiquitous feelings of certainty. Feeling certain despite the degree of inherent complexity and ambiguity. Feeling certain despite the rudimentary state of empirical knowledge. Feeling certain despite the absence of technologically objective methods to assist assessment or evaluate treatment results"--




Managing Uncertainty in Mental Health Care


Book Description

As the profound contribution of mental illness to disability, morbidity, and mortality has gained acceptance, mental health has grown into a global priority. One in five experience mental illness in their lifetime, and those who suffer are coming forward in unprecedented numbers. As more people seek care for themselves and others, providers are increasingly unable to meet the demand through existing systems and mental health care approaches. In Managing Uncertainty in Mental Health Care, Drs. Patricia Rockman and José Silveira critically examine core assumptions informing the primary approaches currently used to assess mental illness in clinical settings, with an emphasis on clinician certainty. They illustrate how current diagnostic frameworks obscure clinician uncertainty while encouraging overconfidence and go on to consider potential strategies for lessening the impact of inevitable errors. Ultimately, this book makes a case for acknowledging the fallibility of clinical judgment, independent of competence and experience, and the need to modify approaches to mental health care so that they align with the irreducible uncertainty of the domain. By exploring emerging transdiagnostic approaches to mental health care in terms of their alignment with irreducible uncertainty, Rockman and Silveira make space for error and offer clinicians a novel way to advance the fundamental aim of mental health care: to reduce the harm and suffering of all.




Inevitable Uncertainty


Book Description

Is the worst yet to come, or will there be a darkness that precedes the dawn as everyone awaits the last days? And can it be possible that the last days are the new beginning of what is truly marvelous and worth every struggle, both real and imaginary? This matter of inevitable uncertainty is a lifelong challenge that will not yield to the intentions of the best plans. One must endure its magnitude with boldness and faith that is nurtured in the mind and deposited into the heart, where every beat pounds it into submission to indomitable will, lest despair direct one to an insignifi cant fate. I believe! One must proclaim, and then prophesy to the horizon whether it forebodes malady or casts a sweet allurement. I will! One must proclaim in spite of dissenters who prove to be great fair weather company along for the ride. And one must pray that one will survive through the foolish measures of their own unbridled bravery, while the course through the unknown looms as an undefeatable giant. No time is wasted, for every step forward is progress and every resting place is a recharge, every fall is a chance to rise again. Surely the demons will howl when the moon rises and the day vultures will soar in the midst of the trial, which hardens your resolve, and you shall laugh when your victory shuts their mouths. And those who laugh last, laughs best.




Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing


Book Description

This new edition of a bestselling, evidence-based textbook provides a comprehensive overview of psychiatric and mental health nursing. Keeping service users and their recovery at the centre of care, the holistic approach will help nurses to gain the tools and understanding required to work in this complex area. Extensively updated for this new edition, the text looks at: Aspects of mental health nursing: covering topics such as ethics, developing therapeutic relationships and supervision. The foundations of mental health nursing: discussing diagnosis, assessment and risk. Caring for those experiencing mental health distress: looking at wide range of troubles including anxiety, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and issues around sexuality and gender. Care planning and approaches to therapeutic practice: exploring ideas, pathways and treatments such as recovery, CBT, psychodynamic therapies and psychopharmacology. Services and support for those with mental health distress: covering topics such as collaborative work, involvement of service users and their families and carers, and a range of different mental healthcare settings. Mental health nursing in the twenty-first century: highlighting emerging and future trends including the political landscape, physical health and health promotion, and technological advances. This accessible and comprehensive textbook integrates service user perspectives throughout and includes student-friendly features such as learning outcomes, key points summaries, reflection points and further reading sections. It is an essential resource for all mental health nursing students, as well as an invaluable reference for practising nurses.




Working With Serious Mental Illness


Book Description

When working in the field of mental illness, the best evidence is people's lived experience. The third edition of Working with Serious Mental Illness maintains its focus on research data, but this is framed by clients' personal perspectives to provide clear, practical advice for practitioners. Aimed at nurses and healthcare practitioners working with mental illnesses such as severe depression, bi-polar disorder and psychosis, this book provides solutions for engaging and working with clients and their families. It vividly presents lived experience and the recommendations of clients, then proceeds through developing and implementing effective interventions and how to reflect on client relationships to ensure sustained success. Easy to read and packed full of practical tips and strategies, this is the ideal book for all healthcare practitioners working with patients with serious mental illness, their families and their carers. It will also be valuable reading for staff working in acute and community mental care settings who lack specialist training in serious mental health disorders, for nursing students, mental health nurses and general nurses working in mental health, primary care and community settings. - Focuses on the lived experiences, observations and recommendations for practitioners of people who use mental health services - Combines theory and practice in a skills and intervention-based approach - Presents down-to-earth intervention ideas designed for practitioners working at the front line - Practical advice is provided in a user-friendly, clearly accessible way - Contributions from experts and editors who are leaders in their field - All content fully revised and updated to reflect changes in mental health service provision - New chapters on Parity of Esteem, Working with the Principles of Trauma Informed Care and Looking After Ourselves - All-new colour design and format




The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism


Book Description

The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism demonstrates the promise and diversity of the interactionist perspective in social science today, providing students and practitioners with an overview of the impressive developments in interactionist theory, methods and research. Thematically organized, it explores the history of interactionism and the contemporary state of the field, considering the ways in which scholars approach topics that are central to interactionism. As such, it presents discussions of self, identity, gender and sexuality, race, emotions, social organization, media and the internet, and social problems. With attention to new developments in methods and methodologies, including digital ethnography, visual methods and research ethics, the authors also engage with new areas of investigation that have emerged in light of current societal developments, such as policing and police violence, interactionism beyond binaries and social media. Providing a comprehensive overview of the current state and possible future of interactionist research, it will appeal to interactionist scholars, as well as to established sociologists and students of sociology who have an interest in latest developments in interactionism.




Phenomenology, Uncertainty, and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter


Book Description

Phenomenology, Uncertainty and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter is the latest in a series of books where Mark Leffert explores the therapeutic encounter as both process and situation; looking for evidence of therapeutic effectiveness rather than accepting existing psychoanalytic concepts of theory or cure without question. Mark Leffert focuses on the uncomfortable fact that analysts and therapists can and do make many mistaken assumptions and false moves within their clinical practice, and that there is a tendency to ignore the significant levels of uncertainty in what they do. Beginning with a discussion of the phenomenology of the self and its relations with the world, the book moves on to explore the notion that interdisciplinary discourse both opens up possibilities in the therapeutic encounter but also imposes healthy constraints on what can be thought or theorized about psychoanalytically. Phenomenology, Uncertainty and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter contributes a new understanding of familiar material and brings a new focus to the care-giving and healing aspects of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy leading to a shift in the analyst’s identity from that of one who analyses to one who cares for and heals. This book will be of interest to Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, neuroscientists and academics in the fields of psychiatry, comparative literature and literature and the mind.







Einstein’s Brain


Book Description

This book reviews the research on Einstein’s brain from a sociological perspective and in the context of the social brain paradigm. Instead of “Einstein, the genius of geniuses” standing on the shoulders of giants, Restivo proposes a concept of Einstein the social being standing on the shoulders of social networks. Rather than challenging Einstein’s uniqueness or the uniqueness of his achievements, the book grounds Einstein and his achievements in a social ecology opposed to the myths of the “I,” individualism, and the very idea of “genius.” “Einstein” is defined by the particular configuration of social networks that he engaged as his life unfolded, not by biological inheritances.