Emergency-room psychiatrist Dr. Paul Linde came to Zimbabwe to take the helm at the Harare Central Hospital, where dozens of patients present new challenges every day. From a case of factitious disorder -- in which a young man treats his own leg like a pin cushion -- to a woman suffering from kufungisisa, the strange ailment of "thinking too much," Linde tells of his patients' demons and their difficulties in a vivid portrait of a world where witchcraft still reigns and psychosis is stigmatized as a contagious illness. Linde presents a wry and inspiring tale of medicine at the crossroads of two cultures. Book jacket.
A leading interpreter of modernity argues that our culture of limitless self-fulfillment is making millions mentally ill. Training her analytic eye on manic depression and schizophrenia, Liah Greenfeld, in the culminating volume of her trilogy on nationalism, traces these dysfunctions to society’s overburdening demands for self-realization.
The psychiatric emergency room, a fast-paced combat zone with pressure to match, thrusts its medical providers into the outland of human experience where they must respond rapidly and decisively in spite of uncertainty and, very often, danger. In this lively first-person narrative, Paul R. Linde takes readers behind the scenes at an urban psychiatric emergency room, with all its chaos and pathos, where we witness mental health professionals doing their best to alleviate suffering and repair shattered lives. As he and his colleagues encounter patients who are hallucinating, drunk, catatonic, aggressive, suicidal, high on drugs, paranoid, and physically sick, Linde examines the many ethical, legal, moral, and medical issues that confront today's psychiatric providers. He describes a profession under siege from the outside—health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, government regulators, and even "patients' rights" advocates—and from the inside—biomedical and academic psychiatrists who have forgotten to care for the patient and have instead become checklist-marking pill-peddlers. While lifting the veil on a crucial area of psychiatry that is as real as it gets, Danger to Self also injects a healthy dose of compassion into the practice of medicine and psychiatry.
In the midst of an ongoing debate about health care, what does the Bible say about healing? Here a respected scholar reads biblical texts on health and healing with care and imagination, engaging the reader in lively conversations with the text and with questions of contemporary theological and pastoral concern. Gaiser offers close readings of fifteen key Old and New Testament passages, considering their significance for the church's understanding of healing and its ministry today. The book examines such significant matters as God's role in healing, the relation between sickness and sin, healing and prayer, God's healing and medical science, and healing under the sign of the cross, offering fresh insights for anyone interested in Christian views on healing.
Burnout is common among doctors in the West, so one might assume that a medical career in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, would place far greater strain on the idealism that drives many doctors. But, as A Heart for the Work makes clear, Malawian medical students learn to confront poverty creatively, experiencing fatigue and frustration but also joy and commitment on their way to becoming physicians. The first ethnography of medical training in the global South, Claire L. Wendland’s book is a moving and perceptive look at medicine in a world where the transnational movement of people and ideas creates both devastation and possibility. Wendland, a physician anthropologist, conducted extensive interviews and worked in wards, clinics, and operating theaters alongside the student doctors whose stories she relates. From the relative calm of Malawi’s College of Medicine to the turbulence of training at hospitals with gravely ill patients and dramatically inadequate supplies, staff, and technology, Wendland’s work reveals the way these young doctors engage the contradictions of their circumstances, shedding new light on debates about the effects of medical training, the impact of traditional healing, and the purposes of medicine.
The interaction of culture and mental illness is the focus of the Clinical Manual of Cultural Psychiatry, which is designed to help mental health clinicians become culturally competent and skilled in the treatment of patients from diverse backgrounds. The product of nearly two decades of seminar experience, the book teaches clinicians when it is appropriate to ask "Is what I am seeing in this patient typical behavior in his or her culture?" The ability to see someone else's worldview is essential for working with ethnic minority and culturally diverse patients, and the author, who designed the course that was this handbook's precursor, has expanded the second edition to take into account shifting demographics and the changing culture of mental health treatment. The content of the new edition has been completely updated, expanded to include new material, and enhanced by innovative features that will prove helpful for mental health clinicians as they encounter diverse patient populations. The new chapter on women reflects the fact that mental health disparities extend beyond ethnic minorities. Women have significantly higher rates of posttraumatic stress disorder and affective disorders, for example, yet research on women has been limited largely to the relationship between reproductive functioning and mental health. Two new chapters address the alarming number of unmet mental health needs that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients suffer from. These chapters emphasize the need for mental health providers and policy makers to remedy these disparities. A new chapter has been added to help clinicians determine the role religious and spiritual beliefs play in psychological functioning, because religious and spiritual beliefs have been found to have both positive and negative effects on mental health. The newly introduced DSM-5® Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) is addressed in the book's introduction and is included in its entirety, along with an informant module, 12 supplementary modules, and guidelines for their use in a psychiatric assessment. In addition, the reader has access to videotaped examples using simulated patients to illustrate practical application of the DSM-5® Outline for Cultural Formulation and CFI. Extensive information on ethnopsychopharmacology, reviewing clinical reports of ethnic variation with several different classes of psychotropic medications and examining the relationship of pharmacogenetics, ethnicity, and environmental factors to pharmacologic treatment of minorities. The book updates coverage of African American, Asian American, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American/Alaskan Native cultures as they relate to mental health issues while retaining the nuanced approach that was so effective in the first edition. Course-tested and DSM-5® compatible throughout, the Clinical Manual of Cultural Psychiatry is a must-read for clinicians in our diverse era.
What does a father do when hope is gone that his only son can ever lead anything close to a “normal” life? That’s the question that haunted Dick Russell in the fall of 2011, when his son, Franklin, was thirty-two. At the age of seventeen, Franklin had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. For years he spent time in and out of various hospitals, and even went through periods of adamantly denying that Dick was actually his father. A mixed-race child, Franklin was handsome, intelligent, and sensitive until his mental illness suddenly took control. After spending the ensuing years trying to build some semblance of a normal father-son relationship, Dick was invited with his son, out of the blue, to witness the annual wildlife migration on Africa’s Serengeti Plain. Seizing this potential opportunity to repair the damage that both had struggled with, after going through two perilous nights together in Tanzania, ultimately the two-week trip changed both of their lives. Desperately seeking an alternative to the medical model’s medication regimen, the author introduces Franklin to a West African shaman in Jamaica. Dick discovers Franklin’s psychic capabilities behind the seemingly delusional thought patterns, as well as his artistic talents. Theirs becomes an ancestral quest, the journey finally taking them to the sacred lands of New Mexico and an indigenous healer. For those who understand the pain of mental illness as well the bond between a parent and a child, My Mysterious Son shares the intimate and beautiful story of a father who will do everything in his power to repair his relationship with a young man damaged by mental illness.
The twelfth edition of the Sociology of Mental Disorder presents the major issues and research findings on the influence of race, social class, gender, and age on the incidence and prevalence of mental disorders. The text also examines the institutions that help those with mental disorders, mental health law, and public policy. Many important updates are new to this edition: The mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are examined. Aging and mental health is discussed in more detail. Updated review of gender differences in mental disorder. A revised and more in-depth discussion of mental health and race. Problems in the community care of the mentally ill are covered. Updates of research and citations throughout. Blending foundational concepts and sociological perspectives on mental health issues with newer studies and accounts in an accessible and authoritative survey of the field, the new edition of Sociology of Mental Disorder remains an essential text and an invaluable resource for students and scholars.
A witch's curse, an imperialist conspiracy, a racist plot--Alexander Rödlach draws on a decade of research and work in Zimbabwe to compare local beliefs about the cause of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa and the impact of these beliefs on public health and advocacy programs.
