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.
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.
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.
Health care regulatory agencies demand that patients receive efficient, competent, compassionate care; however, because of caregivers' own unhealed issues along with other factors, care often falls short of those goals. Melanie Sears, RN, MBA, PhD, leverages more than thirty years of nursing experience to look at what really prevents patients from getting the care they need and health care workers from getting the support needed to thrive in the stressful environment of health care. From domination-style management, fear and judgment-based practitioner relationships, and a poignant separation between physical, mental, and emotional care, the costs of these factors are enormous. Sears argues that the most effective way to evolve this problematic culture is to shift the language used by those providing care.
This reference takes each of the major theories in psychiatry and demonstrates conclusively that it is so flawed as to be beyond salvation. McLaren shows how the phenomena of mental disorder can be described in a parsimonious dualist model which leads directly to a humanist form of management.
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.
Since adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the interpretive General Comment 1, the topic of legal capacity in mental health settings has generated considerable debate in disciplines ranging from law and psychiatry to public health and public policy. With over 180 countries having ratified the Convention, the shifts required in law and clinical practice need to be informed by interdisciplinary and contextually relevant research as well as the views of stakeholders. With an equal emphasis on the Global North and Global South, this volume offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis of legal capacity in the realm of mental health. Integrating rigorous academic research with perspectives from people with psychosocial disabilities and their caregivers, the authors provide a holistic overview of pertinent issues and suggest avenues for reform.
Mental disorders are ubiquitous, profoundly disabling and people suffering from them frequently endure the worst conditions of life. In recent decades both mental health and human rights have emerged as areas of practice, inquiry, national policy-making and shared international concern. Human-rights monitoring and reporting are core features of public administration in most countries, and human rights law has burgeoned. Mental health also enjoys a new dignity in scholarship, international discussions and programs, mass-media coverage and political debate. Today's experts insist that it impacts on every aspect of health and human well-being, and so becomes essential to achieving human rights. It is remarkable however that the struggle for human rights over the past two centuries largely bypassed the plight of those with mental disabilities. Mental health is frequently absent from routine health and social policy-making and research, and from many global health initiatives, for example, the Millenium Development Goals. Yet the impact of mental disorder is profound, not least when combined with poverty, mass trauma and social disruption, as in many poorer countries. Stigma is widespread and mental disorders frequently go unnoticed and untreated. Even in settings where mental health has attracted attention and services have undergone reform, resources are typically scarce, inequitably distributed, and inefficiently deployed. Social inclusion of those with psychosocial disabilities languishes as a distant ideal. In practice, therefore, the international community still tends to prioritise human rights while largely ignoring mental health, which remains in the shadow of physical-health programs. Yet not only do persons with mental disorders suffer deprivations of human rights but violations of human rights are now recognized as a major cause of mental disorder - a pattern that indicates how inextricably linked are the two domains. This volume offers the first attempt at a comprehensive survey of the key aspects of this interrelationship. It examines the crucial relationships and histories of mental health and human rights, and their interconnections with law, culture, ethnicity, class, economics, neuro-biology, and stigma. It investigates the responsibilities of states in securing the rights of those with mental disabilities, the predicaments of vulnerable groups, and the challenge of promoting and protecting mental health. In this wide-ranging analysis, many themes recur - for example, the enormous mental health burdens caused by war and social conflicts; the need to include mental-health interventions in humanitarian programs in a manner that does not undermine traditional healing and recovery processes of indigenous peoples; and the imperative to reduce gender-based violence and inequities. It particularly focuses on the first-person narratives of mental-health consumers, their families and carers, the collective voices that invite a major shift in vision and praxis. The book will be valuable for mental-health and helping professionals, lawyers, philosophers, human-rights workers and their organisations, the UN and other international agencies, social scientists, representatives of government, teachers, religious professionals, researchers, and policy-makers.
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.
Covering more than forty years, this engaging memoir chronicles Dr. Azim Jiwani’s journey from his early years of acquiring a wide-ranging medical education; his varied medical experiences in developed and developing societies; and his impetus and inspiration to tackle the substantial challenges of global health and human development. "Humanizing Medicine: Making Health Tangible" describes the author’s primary endeavours with the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN): a large, non-profit development organization, including an international university, with a mission to foster local leadership; strengthen and build capacity for better and more equitable, compassionate, contextual and affordable healthcare and to improve health systems. The AKDN strives to institute and promote medical education that is relevant and responsive to society’s needs throughout the developing world. Dr. Jiwani’s extensive travels to engage with many local, national, and international institutions—in both the advanced and the developing world – fostered cooperation, collaboration, and partnerships. Conditions encountered in his work, and his travels enabled him to trace significant factors that impact global health development over the twentieth century’s closing decades and into the early twenty first century. Along the way, Dr. Jiwani raises questions about the ethical and moral foundations of development and health - the historical, social, political, economic and anthropological factors underlying the prevailing state of development and the vast disparities between the wealthy countries of the North and the evolving global South. He reflects on the conditions necessary for equity, access, and quality in healthcare. The book gives an insightful commentary on the critical human, political, scientific, technological, and geopolitical conditions essential to avert future environmental and health care crises and foster global cooperation for a more humane, just, and pluralistic global society.
