Mental Health

Mental Health

Here you will find books on the subject of mental health. Reviews are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent review appearing first in the list.

Enactive Psychiatry

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously described the philosophical method as ‘therapy’, as a process that produces therapeutic relief by dissolving the linguistic misconceptions that masquerade as philosophical problems. While Sanneke de Haan’s Enactive Psychiatry

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Hughes’ Outline of Modern Psychiatry

Psychiatry is under siege.  The past president of the NIMH, Dr Steve Hyman, has documented the difficulties in a recent invited article,…

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Talking Back to Psychiatry

Since the 1960s various mental health consumer organizations have advocated for mental health consumers, and for improved services. Loosely referred to a…

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Deinstitutionalization And People With Intellectual Disabilities

The past five years have seen a reinvigoration of scholarship on disability.  Deinstitutionalization and People with Intellectual Disabilities…

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November of the Soul

The encyclopedic book, November of the Soul, is a fascinating, comprehensive and illuminating look at the issue of suicide. Colt examines suicid…

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Empowering People with Severe Mental Illness

Empowerment is a ubiquitous concept. Everyone from mental health professionals, rights activists and life coaches to advertisers and teachers seeks to em…

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From Trauma to Transformation

Perhaps because in South African we are so immersed in trauma and trauma therapy because of our level of violence in society, it is that I found this boo…

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Washing My Life Away

This is a moving and delightfully unpretentious little book written by someone who had an entirely normal childhood and who traces the onset of obsessive…

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Destructive Trends in Mental Health

 This book consists of 15 chapters about various trends in mental health.  With one  exception, all of the chapters are written by psychologists.  Contri…

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The Broken Mirror

From the start, one has to say that the endlessly repetitive case studies are not engaging or interesting, and for the most part Phillips presents the co…

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Mental Health At The Crossroads

The plethora of books presenting "models" of mental health and psychiatry is testament to the disputed nature of just what is going on when a p…

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On Our Own, Together

One aspect of Sally Clay’s experience is, most unfortunately, far from unique. For instance, in the concluding chapter she writes: "I was one of tho…

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Social Inclusion of People with Mental Illness

This book is a collaboration between two professors of psychiatry, one in the UK, the other in the US, so it provides the opportunity to explore issues i…

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Multifamily Groups in the Treatment of Severe Psychiatric Disorders

It’s likely that few philosophers who consult this service know about the unusually effective mental health treatment described in this book: psychoeduca…

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50 Signs of Mental Illness

Although it seems a most unlikely thing to do, Dr Hicks has set out to create an A to Z cocktail menu of the diagnoses that could theoretically plague us…

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Understanding Paranoia

At least once all of us have shown a type of behavior that someone has labeled as paranoid. Nevertheless paranoia is not a mere hurtful epithet. As a mat…

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Mental Health Policy in Britain

The asylum casts a long shadow over psychiatry. Broad picture policy debates are frequently framed in terms of whether deinstitutionalization has ‘worked…

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Recovery in Mental Illness

The disentanglement of the thicket of thorny issues, associated with "recovery" from mental illness, is the crux of the riveting tome, entitled…

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Masters of the Mind

This book outlines seven "coexisting paradigms" that aim to understand the life of the mind. These paradigms reflect the insights of thinkers a…

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Remembering Trauma

"If faced with a choice between being miserable and not knowing why, and being miserable and being able to blame someone else, may people will ch…

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Straight Talk about Psychological Testing for Kids

The word nebulous might indeed be applied to our thinking when psychological testing is mooted for anyone, especially a child.  The then-president of the…

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Tarnation

Tarnation is a remarkable documentary by Jonathan Caoette about the life of his mother, Renee, and his relationship with her.  His mother fell off…

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Living Outside Mental Illness

Larry Davidson has conducted numerous qualitative studies into aspects of schizophrenia, focusing on the experiences of those diagnosed with this disorde…

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Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder

This book has a very precise aim and is targeted at a very precise audience although not quite as narrow as the subtitle would suggest. Its averred aim i…

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Relational Mental Health

José Guimón is a psychiatrist at the University of Geneva Medical School.  In the Foreword, Otto Kernberg says Guimón is one of the most prestigious E…

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