Almost a Revolution

Almost a Revolution PDF Author: Paul S. Appelbaum
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195068801
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book

Book Description
Doubts about the reality of mental illness and the benefits of psychiatric treatment helped foment a revolution in the law's attitude toward mental disorders over the last 25 years. Legal reformers pushed for laws to make it more difficult to hospitalize and treat people with mental illness, and easier to punish them when they committed criminal acts. Advocates of reform promised vast changes in how our society deals with the mentally ill; opponents warily predicted chaos and mass suffering. Now, with the tide of reform ebbing, Paul Appelbaum examines what these changes have wrought. The message emerging from his careful review is a surprising one: less has changed than almost anyone predicted. When the law gets in the way of commonsense beliefs about the need to treat serious mental illness, it is often put aside. Judges, lawyers, mental health professionals, family members, and the general public collaborate in fashioning an extra-legal process to accomplish what they think is fair for persons with mental illness. Appelbaum demonstrates this thesis in analyses of four of the most important reforms in mental health law over the past two decades: involuntary hospitalization, liability of professionals for violent acts committed by their patients, the right to refuse treatment, and the insanity defense. This timely and important work will inform and enlighten the debate about mental health law and its implications and consequences. The book will be essential for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, lawyers, and all those concerned with our policies toward people with mental illness.

Almost a Revolution

Almost a Revolution PDF Author: Paul S. Appelbaum
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195068801
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book

Book Description
Doubts about the reality of mental illness and the benefits of psychiatric treatment helped foment a revolution in the law's attitude toward mental disorders over the last 25 years. Legal reformers pushed for laws to make it more difficult to hospitalize and treat people with mental illness, and easier to punish them when they committed criminal acts. Advocates of reform promised vast changes in how our society deals with the mentally ill; opponents warily predicted chaos and mass suffering. Now, with the tide of reform ebbing, Paul Appelbaum examines what these changes have wrought. The message emerging from his careful review is a surprising one: less has changed than almost anyone predicted. When the law gets in the way of commonsense beliefs about the need to treat serious mental illness, it is often put aside. Judges, lawyers, mental health professionals, family members, and the general public collaborate in fashioning an extra-legal process to accomplish what they think is fair for persons with mental illness. Appelbaum demonstrates this thesis in analyses of four of the most important reforms in mental health law over the past two decades: involuntary hospitalization, liability of professionals for violent acts committed by their patients, the right to refuse treatment, and the insanity defense. This timely and important work will inform and enlighten the debate about mental health law and its implications and consequences. The book will be essential for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, lawyers, and all those concerned with our policies toward people with mental illness.

The Mental Hygiene Movement

The Mental Hygiene Movement PDF Author: Clifford Whittingham Beers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mental illness
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Get Book

Book Description


Surviving Mental Illness

Surviving Mental Illness PDF Author: Agnes B. Hatfield
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9780898620221
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book

Book Description
In this era of revolutionary progress in the areas of science and medicine, it comes as no surprise that knowledge of the biology of mental illness and psychopharmacologic treatments has increased greatly within the past few decades. During this same time frame, however, the experiential side of mental illness has been almost completely neglected by researchers and educators. Fortunately, the trend is being reversed. Leading authorities are becoming increasingly aware that the personal experiences of people with severe and persistent mental illness can reveal the most authentic--and perhaps most helpful--information on behaviors that have long puzzled professionals in the field. This has contributed to a renewed and growing interest in learning more about the ways people experience mental illness and the process of recovery. Leading the way in redressing the imbalance, this book examines the subjective experiences of patients with multiple diagnoses, including schizophrenia, bipolar illness, major endogenous depression, and other disorders with psychotic features and long-term disabling consequences. Numerous personal accounts are drawn from research reports, newsletters, journals, spoken reports, and observed behavior to shed light on the inner worlds of people afflicted with severe and persistent mental illness. The volume covers a wide range of topics, starting with disturbances in the sense of self, in emotions, relationships, and behaviors, and in the ways reality is experienced by the mentally ill. In the process, some common patterns of lifetime experience are revealed even among patients with great differences in levels of functional capability and in their emotional and rational assessment of their experience. The final section of the book is directed toward understanding the process of acceptance, growth toward recovery, and the development of an acceptable identity and new purpose in life. Material is presented within the conceptual framework of coping and adaptation and self theory; in addition, considerable attention is given to the patient's perception of which types of personal and professional relationships have been helpful or not helpful. As a result, the book yields important lessons--from the patients themselves--on how service providers, caregivers, and the community at large can be most helpful to those afflicted with major mental illness. Professionals who wish to increase their capacity for empathy, develop more effective rehabilitation strategies, and advance research linking brain anomalies and patient experience will find this book illuminating. Because it illustrates in moving and powerful ways how people truly experience psychiatric disability in a society that demeans their condition and in a helping environment that only dimly understands their agony, the book will be extremely useful for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, educators, and graduate students in psychopathology and clinical skills training.

Within Our Reach

Within Our Reach PDF Author: Rosalynn Carter
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book

Book Description
In Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis, Rosalynn Carter and coauthors Susan K. Golant and Kathryn E. Cade render an insightful, unsparing assessment of the state of mental health. Mrs. Carter has been deeply invested in this issue since her husband's gubernatorial campaign when she saw firsthand the horrific, dehumanizing treatment of people with mental illnesses. Using stories from her 35 years of advocacy to springboard into a discussion of the larger issues at hand, Carter crafts an intimate and powerful account of a subject previously shrouded in stigma and shadow, surveying the dimensions of an issue that has affected us all. She describes a system that continues to fail those in need, even though recent scientific breakthroughs with mental illness have potential to help most people lead more normal lives. Within Our Reach is a seminal, searing, and ultimately optimistic look at how far we've come since Carter's days on the campaign trail and how far we have yet to go.

Mental Health/mental Illness: Revolution in Progress

Mental Health/mental Illness: Revolution in Progress PDF Author: Lealon E. Martin
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Mental health
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book

Book Description


The End of Mental Illness

The End of Mental Illness PDF Author: Daniel G. Amen
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1496438159
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Get Book

Book Description
Dr. Daniel Amen offers evidence-based approach to preventing and treating conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, addictions, PTSD, bipolar, and more.

Fighting for Recovery

Fighting for Recovery PDF Author: Phyllis Vine
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 080707974X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Get Book

Book Description
An essential history of the recovery movement for people with mental illness, and an inspiring account of how former patients and advocates challenged a flawed system and encouraged mental health activism This definitive people’s history of the recovery movement spans the 1970s to the present day and proves to readers just how essential mental health activism is to every person in this country, whether you have a current psychiatric diagnosis or not. In Fighting for Recovery, professor and mental health advocate Phyllis Vine tells the history of the former psychiatric patients, families, and courageous activists who formed a patients’ liberation movement that challenged medical authority and proved to the world that recovery from mental illness is possible. Mental health discussions have become more common in everyday life, but there are still enormous numbers of people with psychiatric illness in jails and prisons or who are experiencing homelessness—proving there is still progress to be made. This is a book for you A friend or family member of someone with serious psychiatric diagnoses, to understand the history of mental health reform A person struggling with their own diagnoses, to learn how other patients have advocated for themselves An activist in the peer-services network: social workers, psychologists, and peer counselors, to advocate for change in the treatment of psychiatric patients at the institutional and individual levels A policy maker, clinical psychologist, psychiatric resident, or scholar who wants to become familiar with the social histories of mental illness

The Vital Balance

The Vital Balance PDF Author: Karl Augustus Menninger
Publisher: New York : Viking Press
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Get Book

Book Description
"The fruit of a lifetime of thought, action, and experience, this book by Dr. Menninger and two of his associates describes the nature of the revolution in psychiatry and its connection with the work of Sigmund Freud."--Jacket.

A Fragile Revolution

A Fragile Revolution PDF Author: Barbara Everett
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 088920814X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
Despite two centuries and three major reform movements, mental patients have remained on the outside of the mainstream of society, often living in poverty and violence. Today we are undergoing yet another period of reform and, in a historical first, ex-mental patients, now calling themselves consumers and psychiatric survivors, have been recruited in record numbers by the Ontario government to participate in the change process. A Fragile Revolution investigates the complex relationship between ex-mental patients, the government, the mental health system, and mental health professionals. It also explores how the recent changes in policy have affected that relationship, creating new tensions and new opportunities. Using qualitative interviews with prominent consumer and survivor activists, Everett examines how consumers and survivors define themselves, how they define mental illness, and how their personal experience has been translated into political action. While it is clear that consumers and survivors have affected the rhetoric of reform, they know that words do not equal action. As they struggle to develop their own separate advocacy agenda, they acknowledge that theirs is a fragile revolution, but one that is here to stay.

A Mind that Found Itself

A Mind that Found Itself PDF Author: Clifford Whittingham Beers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health care reform
Languages : en
Pages : 430

Get Book

Book Description
The publication of this work resulted in a public outcry in the 1900's that began an inquiry into the state of U.S. mental health care and psychiatric services. It contributed significantly to the mental hygiene movement and to establish the National Committee for Mental Hygiene