The anthropological demography of health, as a field of interdisciplinary population research, has grown from the 1990s, extending to a remarkable range of key human and policy issues, including: genetic disorders; nutrition; mental health; infant, child, and maternal morbidity; malaria; HIV/AIDS; disability and chronic diseases; new reproductive technologies; and population ageing. By observing group formation and change over time, tracking people's networks, and observing variance between what people say and do, anthropological demography goes beyond the characteristically top-down formal methodologies of most mainstream socio-economic demography and population health. This path-breaking volume charts and integrates the growing body of research that combines ethnography with quantitative models and methods in the field of population health. It offers a clear agenda based on important conceptual and methodological advances, and often working in close collaboration with medical and historical research. Approaches to population that are grounded in sustained ethnographic and historical research provide more than substantive knowledge of how cultural and social formations interact with health. They enable understanding of how local institutions and experience of vital events come to be translated into the demographic and health measures on which survey and clinical programmes rely. This, in turn, makes possible critical evaluation of the empirical adequacy of such translation, reflection on what happens when these models and measures become standardised evaluations of health statuses, and what this implies for governance. The combination of anthropological, demographic, historical, and biological research has gone beyond the initial demographic prioritisation of fertility regulation, to take on an expanded range of key health policy issues, and locate them in the context of the inequalities that so frequently give rise to major health differentials. The Anthropological Demography of Health offers a clear agenda for the application and extension of combined anthropological and demographic thinking in population health, and will provide a point of reference for the field.

A collection of previously published articles discussing the definition of suicide, analyses of its occurrence, and possible therapeutic responses.

Modern society is increasingly preoccupied with fears for the future and the idea of preventing 'the worst'. The result is a focus on attempting to calculate the probabilities of adverse events occurring – in other words, on measuring risk. Since the 1990s, the idea of risk has come to dominate policy and practice in mental health across the USA, Australasia and Europe. In this timely new text, a group of international experts examines the ways in which the narrow focus on specific kinds of risk, such as violence towards others, perpetuates the social disadvantages experienced by mental health service users whilst, at the same time, ignoring the vast array of risks experienced by the service users themselves. Benefitting from the authors' extensive practice experience, the book considers how the dominance of the risk paradigm generates dilemmas for mental health organizations, as well as within leadership and direct practice roles, and offers practical resolutions to these dilemmas that both satisfy professional ethics and improve the experience of the service user. Combining examination of key theories and concepts with insights from front line practice, this latest addition to Palgrave's Beyond the Risk Paradigm series provides an important new dimension to debates on mental health provision.

One day you will feel better... Eyes without Sparkle is a powerful medical autobiography describing the journey followed by the author into, through, and out of puerperal psychosis, the most severe form of postnatal depression. With vivid and intimate descriptions of events and the author’s feelings, this is the only book offering a single first-hand account of postnatal illness. The book serves as an inspiration for anyone suffering from or involved with a depressive illness. For health and social care professionals it is a reflective guide to learning from patients’ experiences, and the examples of positive and negative aspects of treatment can inform mental health services and policies.

Substance misuse and abuse exist in almost every human society. In our western civilization, the bulk of attention has focused on those indi viduals who specifically seek treatment or those who have become so disabled by these problems that they require treatment. These indi viduals usually qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis of alcohol or other substance abuse. However, just as it has been recognized that primary substance abuse is frequently associated with other diagnosable psychi atric disorders, such as sociopathy or attention deficit disorder (residual type) and that the origins of substance abuse are multivariate, we have also begun to become aware that many other individuals in our society with psychiatric or other problems also suffer, to varying degrees, from substance abuse. These problems may be considered secondary by vari ous specialists or treatment personnel; but nevertheless, they are prob lems, and what disorder is primary or secondary in a given individual may often be very difficult to determine in a meaningful fashion. Thus, within the past decade, research studies have reported significant inci dences of substance abuse/or misuse in high school and college-aged populations, in medical populations, and in individuals with other psy chiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and the anxiety and personality disorders. Yet to date little has been done to bring together and systematize this widely scattered data that describes the presence of substance abuse problems in various populations.

This text explores the relationship between the planned or built environment and the occurrence of mental ill-health. It begins by providing a broad overview of what is known about the causes of psychopathic behaviour. It then goes on to discuss the issues that arise when attempting to identify: the impact of the environment as a source of stress; the effects that the environment can have on the quality of relationships between people; and the relationship between symbolic aspects of the environment, the planning process and mental health. The book uses analysis and case studies drawn from the UK and US and contains example illustrations of the built environment.

The publication of proceedings of conferences has often been so delayed that they are useless both to active workers in the field and for cur rently appropriate teaching. Rapid publication on the other hand may impose very difficult conditions upon authors and demand unwelcome sacrifices. We wish to thank the many speakers at ESCAT for their co operation in providing manuscripts and to apologise to those unable for reasons beyond their control to fall in with the rigorous editorial policy. To get this book out at the earliest possible moment we have also cut the normal consultation between editors and authors to a minimum. One decision made in the interests of uniformity was to re place the various terms used by different writers by one, C. A. T. , consistent with the title of the Seminar of which the book is arecord. The organisers of ESCAT decided upon a largely didactic meeting with as little overlap as was practicable between contributions and a de termined attempt to view computerised axial tomography in the light of its clinical usefulness. As consequence, the purpose of this book is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the whole field for clin icians as weIl as radiologists. The editors wish to acknowledge the very efficient help and encourage ment of the publishers and the hard secretarial work of Miss G. JOHNS, as weIl as the editorial assistance of Dr. DEREK KINGSLEY. London, Spring 1977 G. H. DU BOULAY . I. F.