Psychosis and Schizophrenia in Hong Kong

Psychosis and Schizophrenia in Hong Kong

Author: Eric Yu Hai Chen

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2024-03-19

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 9888842854

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This book covers some of the most serious mental health conditions that top the global disease burden and affect 3% of the general population. However, most research on psychotic disorders is undertaken in the West, and few studies have been systematically carried out in Asia despite global interest in regional differences. This work offers a unique and coherent account of these disorders and their treatment in Hong Kong over the last thirty years. Chen and his research programme’s pioneering work has ranged from the impact of early intervention on outcomes and relapse prevention, to the renaming of psychosis to reduce stigma. The studies have contributed to wider international debates on the optimal management of the condition. Their investigations in semantics and cognition, as well as cognition-enhancing exercise interventions, have provided novel insights into deficits encountered in psychotic disorders and how they might be ameliorated. The research has also explored subjective experiences of psychosis and elicited unique perspectives in patients of Asian origin. Each topic is divided into three sections: a global background of the challenges encountered; research findings from Hong Kong; and reflections that place the data in scientific and clinical contexts and offer future directions. “This book contains important research into specific problems facing persons with psychosis and schizophrenia in Hong Kong, arising from environment factors, stigma, and treatment shortfalls. Its insights would help “overcome barriers to facilitate mental health work”, which is how Professor Eric Chen describes the work of the Advisory Committee on Mental Health, and what he has admirably devoted himself to do over the years.” —Wong Yan-Lung SC, chairman, Advisory Committee on Mental Health, Hong Kong, 2017–2023 ‘This learned and comprehensive opus about schizophrenia, its causes, course, and outcomes reaches far beyond its regional scope and presents the best of the world’s current knowledge about schizophrenia as well as the significant contribution to it made by the authors working in Hong Kong.’ —Norman Sartorius, MD, PhD, FRCPsych, president, Association of the Improvement of Mental Health Programs, Geneva


First Episode Psychosis

First Episode Psychosis

Author: Katherine J. Aitchison

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 1999-02-17

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9781853174353

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The new edition of this popular handbook has been thoroughly updated to include the latest data concerning treatment of first-episode patients. Drawing from their experience, the authors discuss the presentation and assessment of the first psychotic episode and review the appropriate use of antipsychotic agents and psychosocial approaches in effective management.


Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT)

Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT)

Author: David L. Roberts

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0199346623

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Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) is a group psychotherapy for individuals with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.


Rethinking Psychopathology

Rethinking Psychopathology

Author: Ivana S. Marková

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2020-08-05

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 9783030434380

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This book presents an original approach to the study of psychiatry that is based on a justified epistemological position, which demands that both the natural and the human/social sciences are necessary in developing our understanding. Psychiatry as a medical specialism was constructed in the nineteenth century through the interplay of both the natural sciences and the human/social sciences. This interplay has created a hybrid discipline that spans biological and socio-cultural-historical domains, which has raised challenges for its understanding and research. This book focuses on one of the principal challenges – how can we explore mental symptoms and mental disorders as complexes of neurobiology on the one hand and meaning on the other? The chapters in this book, dedicated to Germán E Berrios, founder of the Cambridge school of psychopathology, tackles distinctive aspects of psychopathology or related areas. By means of a combination of approaches, chapters seek to unfold another element in our understanding of this field as well as raise new directions for its further study. Rethinking Psychopathology is a valuable resource for clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, psychological researchers, historians of psychology, cultural psychologists, critical psychologists, social scientists, philosophers of psychology, and philosophers of science.


Crazy Like Us

Crazy Like Us

Author: Ethan Watters

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-01-12

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1416587195

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“A blistering and truly original work of reporting and analysis, uncovering America’s role in homogenizing how the world defines wellness and healing” (Po Bronson). In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad. It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented phenomenon. But is it possible America's most troubling impact on the globalizing world has yet to be accounted for? American-style depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia have begun to spread around the world like contagions, and the virus is us. Traveling from Hong Kong to Sri Lanka to Zanzibar to Japan, acclaimed journalist Ethan Watters witnesses firsthand how Western healers often steamroll indigenous expressions of mental health and madness and replace them with our own. In teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we have been homogenizing the way the world goes mad.


The Stigma of Mental Illness - End of the Story?

The Stigma of Mental Illness - End of the Story?

Author: Wolfgang Gaebel

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-08-10

Total Pages: 648

ISBN-13: 3319278398

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This book makes a highly innovative contribution to overcoming the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness – still the heaviest burden both for those afflicted and those caring for them. The scene is set by the presentation of different fundamental perspectives on the problem of stigma and discrimination by researchers, consumers, families, and human rights experts. Current knowledge and practice used in reducing stigma are then described, with information on the programmes adopted across the world and their utility, feasibility, and effectiveness. The core of the volume comprises descriptions of new approaches and innovative programmes specifically designed to overcome stigma and discrimination. In the closing part of the book, the editors – all respected experts in the field – summarize some of the most important evidence- and experience-based recommendations for future action to successfully rewrite the long and burdensome ‘story’ of mental illness stigma and discrimination.


Morality and Health

Morality and Health

Author: Allan M. Brandt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 1135024987

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From the castigation and stigmatization of victims of AIDS to our celebration of diet, exercise and fitness, the moral categorization of health and disease reflects contemporary notions that disease results from moral failure and that health is the representation of moral triumph. Ranging across academic disciplines and historical time periods, the essays in Morality and Health offer a compelling assessment of the powerful role of moral systems for judging the complex questions of risk and responsibility for disease, the experience of illness, and social and cultural responses to those who are sick. Contributors include Keith Thomas, Charles Rosenberg, Richard Shweder, Arthur Kleinman, David Mechanic, Nancy Tomes and Linda Gordon.


Positive Psychotherapy for Psychosis

Positive Psychotherapy for Psychosis

Author: Mike Slade

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-12-19

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1134798652

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Positive Psychotherapy for Psychosis describes a new psychological intervention, which for the first time applies emerging research from the field of positive psychology specifically to psychosis. The book contains guidance on adapting the approach for use in individual treatments, and on providing part of the intervention, either as individual sessions or by integrating Positive Psychotherapy for Psychosis sessions into other treatments. Divided into two sections – Theory and the Intervention Manual – this book offers methodologically rigorous research, case studies and detailed aims and instructions for clinicians and therapists. The structured, step-by-step manual, for use with clients, includes downloadable handouts, session materials, activities, guides and therapist tips. The manual will be a practical, positive and innovative resource for mental health professionals, providing all the material needed to deliver this evidence-based approach that is designed to improve wellbeing and reduce symptoms experienced by people living with psychosis. Positive Psychotherapy for Psychosis will be of interest to mental health clinicians working with people with psychosis, as well as clinical and counselling psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health nurses, psychotherapists, social workers, occupational therapists, support workers and peer support specialists.


Stigma and Mental Illness

Stigma and Mental Illness

Author: Paul Jay Fink

Publisher: American Psychiatric Pub

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9780880484053

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This book is a collection of writings on how society has stigmatized mentally ill persons, their families, and their caregivers. First-hand accounts poignantly portray what it is like to be the victim of stigma and mental illness. Stigma and Mental Illness also presents historical, societal, and institutional viewpoints that underscore the devastating effects of stigma.


Paradigms Lost

Paradigms Lost

Author: Heather Stuart

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-06-28

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0199797633

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Paradigms Lost challenges key paradigms currently held about the prevention or reduction of stigma attached to mental illness using evidence and the experience the authors gathered during the many years of their work in this field. Each chapter examines one currently held paradigm and presents reasons why it should be replaced with a new perspective. The book argues for enlightened opportunism (using every opportunity to fight stigma), rather than more time consuming planning, and emphasizes that the best way to approach anti-stigma work is to select targets jointly with those who are most concerned. The most radical change of paradigms concerns the evaluation of outcome for anti-stigma activities. Previously, changes in stigmatizing attitudes were used as the best indicator of success. Paradigms Lost and its authors argue that it is now necessary to measure changes in behaviors (both from the perspective of those stigmatized and those who stigmatize) to obtain a more valid measure of a program's success. Other myths to be challenged: providing knowledge about mental illness will reduce stigma; community care will de-stigmatize mental illness and psychiatry; people with a mental illness are less discriminated against in developing countries. Paradigms Lost concludes by describing key elements in successful anti stigma work including the recommended duration of anti-stigma programmes, the involvement of those with mental illness in designing programmes, and the definition of programmes in accordance with local circumstances. A summary of weaknesses of currently held paradigms and corresponding lists of best practice principles to guide future anti-stigma action and research bring this insightful volume to an apt conclusion.