Written by distinguished academic and Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, and a now retired NHS consultant psychiatrist, this latest edition of Models for Mental Disorders reflects the significant changes in clinical practice and understanding in the last four years. With increased emphasis on the multidisciplinary approach now being used in all mental health facilities in Europe, the two new chapters on application of models in multidisciplinary teams and how understanding of models improves communication are particularly timely and relevant. The book also features an easy-to-read new appendix providing a glossary of commonly-used terms in psychiatry for the interested lay-reader. An adopted title on many psychology courses throughout the UK, this fourth edition continues to provide an invaluable introduction to the different models used in evaluating mental health, and is recommended reading for all those interested in mental health and illness.

Annotation.

Many published books that comment on the medical model have been written by doctors, who assume that readers have the same knowledge of medicine, or by those who have attempted to discredit and attack the medical practice. Both types of book have tended to present diagnostic categories in medicine as universally scientifically valid examples of clear-cut diseases easily distinguished from each other and from health; with a fixed prognosis; and with a well-understood aetiology leading to disease-reversing treatments. These are contrasted with psychiatric diagnoses and treatments, which are described as unclear and inadequate in comparison. The Medical Model in Mental Health: An Explanation and Evaluation explores the overlap between the usefulness of diagnostic constructs (which enable prognosis and treatment decisions) and the therapeutic effectiveness of psychiatry compared with general medicine. The book explains the medical model and how it applies in mental health, assuming little knowledge or experience of medicine, and defends psychiatry as a medical practice.

Substantially updated, it explains the many facets of psychiatry in a coherent manner. Uses a frank and unbiased outline to describe the advantages and deficiencies the different models underpinning schools of psychiatric thought have. Features a new chapter which illustrates the cognitive model.

Kiesler's Beyond the Disease Model of Mental Disorder goes beyond recent volumes which argue that psychotropic medications are being overused and abused in contemporary mental health settings. Elliott Valenstein, for example, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, recently argues that people should be highly suspicious of the claim that all mental illness is primarily a biochemical disorder. In his 1998 book, Blaming the Brain: The Truth about Drugs and Mental Health, Valenstein does not argue that drugs never work or that patients should discontinue taking medication. Valenstein's central point, instead, is that drugs do not attack the real cause of a disorder, since biochemical theories are an unproven hypothesis and probably a false one. Inasmuch as Kiesler's volume is concerned exclusively with scientific explanations of mental disorders, it does not review at all the evidence for psychotropic medications or for other treatments of mental disorders. Kiesler does highlight a message similar to that of Valenstein, who rejects the hypothesis that mental illness is primarily a biochemical disorder. After a comprehensive review of the relevant scientific evidence, Kiesler concludes that henceforth the study of mental disorders must be guided by multicausal theories and research that systematically include an array of biological, psychological, and sociocultural causal factors. Kiesler adds that, in order for this to be accomplished, the mental health field and the public at large must first abandon the invalid monocausal biomedical (disease) model of mental disorder.

Dr. Niall (Jock) McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist who uses philosophical analysis to show that modern psychiatry has no scientific basis. This startling conclusion dovetails neatly with the growing evidence that psychiatric drug treatment is crude and damaging. Needless to say, this message is not popular with mainstream psychiatrists. However, in this book, he shows how the principles of information processing give a formal theory of mind that generates a model of mental disorder as a psychological phenomenon.

My ideas for this book have been evolving over the last several years as I have been working in the animal modeling area and have seen it change rather dramatically. There have been tremendous advances, both in methodology and in conceptualization, yet the literature is scattered in journals encompassing many disciplines. In particular, there have been only very limited attempts to write about the philosophical, conceptual, and controversial issues in this field; to pull together diverse findings; and to provide some general perspective on its future. As will probably be apparent, I am a clinical psychiatrist who also has a fundamental interest in animal behavior, especially primate social behavior. I entered the field from a clinical research standpoint to devel op some animal models of depression after being stimulated to do so by Dr. William Bunney, then at the National Institute of Mental Health and now at the University of California-Irvine. The field has grown rapidly since then and there is considerable research activity. Indeed, the re search activity has grown more rapidly than our conceptualization of what animal models are and are not. Animal preparations are now available for studying specific aspects of certain types of psychopathology. Thoughtful workers in the animal modeling field no longer talk about comprehensive models but rather about more limited experimental preparations in animals for studying certain specific aspects of human psychopathology.

Humane Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model is the second 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 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. Humane Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model presents a variety of alternative models and approaches that are available in addition to, or instead of, the current predominant psychiatric “mental disorder” model. Humane Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model provides more than twenty solicited chapters from experts worldwide, among them Peter Kinderman, former president of the British Psychological Society, and other respected cultural commentators and mental health experts.

Making sense of such bewildering problems as hallucinations, paranoia, depression, and anxiety seems an incredible challenge, but modern psychiatry is able to bring understanding and change to many of those whose lives are impaired by psychiatric problems. This is not accomplished through the application of one dominant psychological theory, but through the integration of perspectives of many such theories in this diverse field into a befitting approach-the biopsychosocial model. Application of the biopsychosocial model will allow for understanding the patient in biological, psychological, and social terms simultaneously, and provide a holistic picture with multiple strategies for treatment. In this book, the author takes a step back from the assessment to demonstrate to the student methods of the information gathered from the patient into a clinically useful whole, essentially showing exactly how and why the psychiatrist arrives at an intervention.