This readable text presents the long-awaited first comprehensive history of the Royal College of Psychiatrists as an organisation, from its creation as the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane in 1841, its development through various name changes and the receipt of two charters, to become the present Royal College as we know it today. As a former President of the College from 1984-7, Dr Bewley also gives an overview of the fascinating developments in British psychiatry and its sub-specialties over the past two centuries. Further, more specific activities are also detailed, such as the formation of the research unit, the College publishing programme of journals and books, and the growth in facilities now provided including the library and information service. The book contains a collection of photographs in a glossy centre section.

This volume explores the history and historiography of madness from the ancient and medieval worlds to the present day. Covering Africa, Asia and South America as well as Europe and North America, chapters discuss broad topics such as the representation of madness in literature and the visual arts, the material culture of madness, madness within life histories and the increased globalization of knowledge and treatment practices. Chronologically and geographically wide-ranging and providing a fascinating overview of the current state of the field, this is essential reading for all students of the history of madness, mental health, psychiatry and medicine.

Discover for yourself what has been proven historically--mental illness is not an incurable physical disease (proven by Freud, perfected by Jung) but a healable, psychospiritual (involving mind and spirit) crisis, a separation of mind and spirit in fear, reversible through a choice of inner empowerment/inner work, pulling your energy back to you in the present, enabling your bodymind to heal itself. If energy is not addressed, patients remain locked in a vicious cycle of remission/relapse, with repeated harsh pharmaceutical and physical treatments that only damage the brain and create more symptoms, then attributed to worsening disease. Know that although temporarily in crisis, your whole life is not a crisis, and that a physical cause for mental illness has never been proven. Your soul, not affected by fear or illness, is ever calm, joyful and wise, and awaits your choice to turn within per free will. Logic has brought you to where you are. End the madness now with these basic methods of self-empowerment, told in laymans terms, and heal for good.

From Madness to Mental Health neither glorifies nor denigrates the contributions of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy, but rather considers how mental disorders have historically challenged the ways in which human beings have understood and valued their bodies, minds, and souls. Greg Eghigian has compiled a unique anthology of readings, from ancient times to the present, that includes Hippocrates; Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, penned in the 1390s; Dorothea Dix; Aaron T. Beck; Carl Rogers; and others, culled from religious texts, clinical case studies, memoirs, academic lectures, hospital and government records, legal and medical treatises, and art collections. Incorporating historical experiences of medical practitioners and those deemed mentally ill, From Madness to Mental Health also includes an updated bibliography of first-person narratives on mental illness compiled by Gail A. Hornstein.

In this book, Marcus Evans makes a strong case for the importance of psychoanalytic supervision in mental health practice and its role in helping frontline staff to "tune in" to their patients' unconscious communications or the "psychotic wavelength".

How do survivors of child abuse, bullying, chronic oppression and discrimination, and other developmental traumas adapt to such unimaginable situations? It is taken for granted that experiences such as hearing voices, altered states of consciousness, dissociative states, lack of trust, and intense emotions are inherently problematic. But what does the evidence actually show? And how much do we still need to learn?

'Madness Reimagined: Envisioning a Better System of Mental Health in America' provides a comprehensive analysis of the current mental health system in the United States. Presented from a sociological rather than a psychological perspective, this book seeks to provide readers with an extensive but accessible look at its history, the current mental health treatment modalities, the various mental health practitioners, the different conditions known as mental health disorders, as well as strategies for improving the system. Trained both in clinical and applied therapy and sociology, the author aims to provide a balance to the work that other books on mental health often lack. As a result, this book proposes a dual approach to the study of mental health. Dr. Steverson acknowledges that while disorders and treatment modalities require a micro-level (intrapsychic) approach, the overall analysis of the mental health system demands a macro-level (sociological) approach. Due to the recent changes in the American healthcare system and the concerns this has raised, this book is a necessary and important contribution to its field. It also reflects a growing desire from the public to better understand this subject as mental health issues continue to gain visibility in the public eye. Free of psychological jargon and in an accessible format, this book will not only appeal to academics and students, but also to mental health consumers, their families, and people who are interested in advocacy.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 67 (1-2), Keele University, course: Contemporary American Fiction, 8 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The following essay deals with the book The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It will try to show that Esther's madness is profoundly linked to her social environment. This on the other hand is in several ways deeply connected with Esther's loss of her father in her childhood. That is, the absence of her father correlates with Esther's behaviour towards her surroundings and her life attitudes. To prove that fact this essay will try to work out the turning point in Esther's life that leads to the final break-out of her illness and her mental spiral down movement that leads her into a psychiatric institution. 1. DIAGNOSIS Esther suffers from a severe case of depression that might have been caused by a genetic defect; but as opposed to Sylvia Plath, from who is known that in her family were reported cases of depression on her father's side, one finds only insufficient hints (that really only serve as foreshadows for the things to happen in the story) that the same is true for Esther, for example her comment about her father's provenance: "My German-speaking father, dead since I was nine, came from some manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia." The reader, who does not know about the book's autobiographical background and Plath's medical history, must consequently assume that Esther's worsening disease is entirely caused by her social environment. This notion is not devious at all.

In her latest contribution to the growing field of emotion studies, Deidre Pribram makes a compelling argument for why culturalist approaches to the study of emotional "disorders" continue to be eschewed, even as the sociocultural and historical study of mental illness flourishes. The author ties this phenomenon to a tension between two fundamentally different approaches to emotion: an individualist approach, which regards emotions as the property of the individual, whether biologically or psychologically, and a culturalist approach, which regards emotions as collective, social processes with distinctive histories and meanings that work to produce particularized subjects. While she links a strong preference for the individualist construct in Western culture to the rise of the psychological and psychiatric disciplines at the turn of the twentieth century, Pribram also engages with a diverse set of case studies tied to psychological and aesthetic discourses on emotions. These range from Van Gogh’s status as emotionally disordered to the public, emotional aesthetics of 19th century melodrama to the diagnostic categories of the DSMs and the fear of "globalizing" emotional disorders in the 21st century. This genuinely interdisciplinary approach makes for a text with potential application in a wide range of disciplines within cultural studies, including sociocultural and historical analysis of psychiatry and psychology, gender theory, subject and identity theory, popular culture studies, and history and theory of the arts.