Critiquing the Psychiatric Model is the first Volume of the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series. Understanding the current systems of psychology and psychiatry is profoundly important. So is exploring alternatives. The Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series presents solicited chapters from international experts on a wide variety of underexplored subjects. This is a series for mental health researchers, teachers, and practitioners, for parents and interested lay readers, and for anyone trying to make sense of anxiety, depression, and other emotional difficulties. Critiquing the Psychiatric Model sets out to present a clear picture of the current “mental disorder paradigm,” one that claims an ability to “diagnose and treat mental disorders” and that provides “medication” as its primary treatment. Critiquing the Psychiatric Model traces the history of the psychiatric model and its “diagnostic manual” and identifies its flaws and problem areas by presenting more than twenty solicited chapters from experts worldwide.

Theoretical Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model of Mental Disorder Labeling is the fourth Volume of the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series. Understanding the current systems of psychology and psychiatry is profoundly important. So is exploring alternatives. The Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series presents solicited chapters from international experts on a wide variety of underexplored subjects. This is a series for mental health researchers, teachers, and practitioners, for parents and interested lay readers, and for anyone trying to make sense of anxiety, depression, and other emotional difficulties. Theoretical Alternatives recognizes and appreciates those who have contributed to the abundance of literature critiquing the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the biomedical model of mental health, and the practice of psychiatric diagnosing. It intends to move past that discourse, and present macro and system-level alternatives to DSM and the ICD diagnosing (the World Health Organization’s International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems), in the form of conceptually developed frameworks, taxonomies, and models to guide clinical work and theory.

Essays written by social work master's degree students responding to the categories of psychological diagnosis issued by the American Psychiatric Association.

Psychiatry is increasingly dominated by the reductionist claim that mental illness is caused by neurobiological abnormalities. Critical psychiatry disagrees with this and proposes a more ethical foundation for practice. This book describes an original framework for renewing mental health services in alliance with people with mental health problems.

Over the last forty years, there have been numerous attempts to critique the theory and practice of mental health care. Taking its lead from anti-psychiatry, Critical Perspectives on Mental Health seeks to explore and evaluate the claims of mainstream mental health ideologies and to establish what implications the critiques of these perspectives have for practice. This text will be essential reading for students and those working in the social work and mental health care professions.

In order to work effectively with people with personality disorders it is important that Mental Health Social Workers (MHSWs) have a clear understanding of trauma and its impact on the person. It is also important that they have good relational skills and the support of the team and organisation. Drawing on an analysis of the similarities (and differences) in service user and MHSWs’ perspectives, the book outlines the further skills, knowledge and conditions that will help them to make a more effective contribution to the support of those with personality disorder. The book will appeal to qualified Mental Health Social Workers and those on Post-Qualifying Programmes because, uniquely, it explores personality disorder from a social work perspective.

It's a bull market in psychiatry these days. A simple search on the Internet of the words "majority of psychotropic medications prescribed without a diagnosis" shows the fury in the eyes of the bull. Lots of psychiatric medications are being prescribed to many people without a justifying diagnosis. A ton of money is being paid in psychiatry.On Wall Street there is a saying: "Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs just get slaughtered!" When it comes to medicine, I haven't seen a slaughtered pig yet. At least not in psychiatry, my specialty. Pigs getting fatter, that's another story.In a bad economy the unemployment rate raises, inviting patients to regard minor imperfections as a diagnosis to blame unemployment on: "Doc, I have ADHD, do something"-discounting that in a good economy the conversation may not take place. In a good economy, patients with minor imperfections stand a better chance to of employment, thus of functioning just fine, not even close to considering a diagnosis. The psychiatrist must do what keeps the patient healthy, not what keeps the patient happy. Psychiatry in general is not about finding happiness, but about finding health. A tension is present between health and happiness. Early in training, a psychiatrist learns to say no, while communicating at the same time validation and support to the patient. The psychiatrist is not supposed to be a drug dealer with license.Health and consumption of healthcare are two different things. The goal of achieving health is at risk of turning into the goal of consuming healthcare, when professional organizations regard psychiatric patients as consumers. The difference is subtle, like between walking home and just walking.Through a flow of ideas, the society influences the normalcy for a person. For instance, when the society hires a psychiatrist to take care of a patient, the normalcy for the patient is fluid, subject to the flow of ideas between the psychiatrist and the patient. Consequently, if the psychiatrist engages in a dialogue with the patient or remains silent influences what is normal for the patient.A universe in itself, brain illness is powerful, tempting, alluring, and strong. It's an attractor. The patient has to negotiate a way out of it. The bidimensional battle of good and evil in a healthy brain becomes the tridimensional battle of good, evil and disease in an ill brain.In the field of psychiatry, usually there is more to the story than what the patient says. When compared to a checklist of symptoms, listening to the story is important, as inferring from the story may be necessary, to sort out the line between what is going on and what the patient believes is going on.The unconscious is a negotiator at the table of the present, because time is always now, in the present, in the unconscious. The past is not the past but is the present in the unconscious. Time is a matter of consciousness. Outside awareness of time, a person is always in the now. A consciously familiar situation is the previous situation in the unconscious. The conscious "this feels familiar" turns into "this is happening again" in the unconscious.

This second edition of Quay Books' bestselling title retains all of the successful features of the first, plus additional material including a chapter on European psychiatric research. Foreword by Kevin Gournay.