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.

This book offers a comprehensive Marxist critique of the business of mental health, demonstrating how the prerogatives of neoliberal capitalism for productive, self-governing citizens have allowed the discourse on mental illness to expand beyond the psychiatric institution into many previously untouched areas of public and private life including the home, school and the workplace. Through historical and contemporary analysis of psy-professional knowledge-claims and practices, Bruce Cohen shows how the extension of psychiatric authority can only be fully comprehended through the systematic theorising of power relations within capitalist society. From schizophrenia and hysteria to Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, from spinning chairs and lobotomies to shock treatment and antidepressants, from the incarceration of working class women in the nineteenth century to the torture of prisoners of the ‘war on terror’ in the twenty-first, Psychiatric Hegemony is an uncompromising account of mental health ideology in neoliberal society.

Eric Maisel invites depression sufferers and their service providers to consider whether human sadness has been monetised into the disease of depression and asks readers to consider the personal implications of this 50 year cultural shift from human problem to medical ailment.

Models of Madness shows that hallucinations and delusions are understandable reactions to life events and circumstances rather than symptoms of a supposed genetic predisposition or biological disturbance. International contributors: * critique the 'medical model' of madness * examine the dominance of the 'illness' approach to understanding madness from historical and economic perspectives * document the role of drug companies * outline the alternative to drug based solutions * identify the urgency and possibility of prevention of madness. Models of Madness promotes a more humane and effective response to treating severely distressed people that will prove essential reading for psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and of great interest to all those who work in the mental health service. This book forms part of the International Society for the Psychological Treatment of Psychoses series edited by Brian Martindale.

This book explores the purpose of clinical psychological and psychiatric diagnosis, and provides a persuasive case for moving away from the traditional practice of psychiatric classification. It discusses the validity and reliability of classification-based approaches to clinical diagnosis, and frames them in their broader historical and societal context. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is used across the world in research and a range of mental health settings; here, Stijn Vanheule argues that the diagnostic reliability of the DSM is overrated, built on a limited biomedical approach to mental disorders that neglects context, and ultimately breeds stigma. The book subsequently makes a passionate plea for a more detailed approach to the study of mental suffering by means of case formulation. Starting from literature on qualitative research the author makes clear how to guarantee the quality of clinical case formulations.

Are hallucinations and delusions really symptoms of an illness called ‘schizophrenia’? Are mental health problems really caused by chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions? Are psychiatric drugs as effective and safe as the drug companies claim? Is madness preventable? This second edition of Models of Madness challenges those who hold to simplistic, pessimistic and often damaging theories and treatments of madness. In particular it challenges beliefs that madness can be explained without reference to social causes and challenges the excessive preoccupation with chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions as causes of human misery, including the conditions that are given the name 'schizophrenia'. This edition updates the now extensive body of research showing that hallucinations, delusions etc. are best understood as reactions to adverse life events and that psychological and social approaches to helping are more effective and far safer than psychiatric drugs and electroshock treatment. A new final chapter discusses why such a damaging ideology has come to dominate mental health and, most importantly, how to change that. Models of Madness is divided into three sections: Section One provides a history of madness, including examples of violence against the ‘mentally ill’, before critiquing the theories and treatments of contemporary biological psychiatry and documenting the corrupting influence of drug companies. Section Two summarises the research showing that hallucinations, delusions etc. are primarily caused by adverse life events (eg. parental loss, bullying, abuse and neglect in childhood, poverty, etc) and can be understood using psychological models ranging from cognitive to psychodynamic. Section Three presents the evidence for a range of effective psychological and social approaches to treatment, from cognitive and family therapy to primary prevention. This book brings together thirty-seven contributors from ten countries and a wide range of scientific disciplines. It provides an evidence-based, optimistic antidote to the pessimism of biological psychiatry. Models of Madness will be essential reading for all involved in mental health, including service users, family members, service managers, policy makers, nurses, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, social workers, occupational therapists, art therapists.

Humane Helping is a comprehensive, practical guide that helps clinicians shift their practice from the mental disorder-and-chemical fix and expert-talk models to a more humane, helpful model that increases their ability to help clients meet life’s challenges and reduce emotional distress. Chapters clearly explain the shortfalls of the current models and the advantages of Eric Maisel’s model and include case studies, reflection questions, and actionable steps. Written for helping professionals in mental health as well as practitioners from fields such as coaching and nursing, Humane Helping challenges current practices and provides helpers with the tools they need to more compassionately, effectively, and honestly serve their clients.

“Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the DSM-5 is his Inferno.” —Errol Morris Since its debut in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has set down the “official” view on what constitutes mental illness. Homosexuality, for instance, was a mental illness until 1973. Each revision has created controversy, but the DSM-5 has taken fire for encouraging doctors to diagnose more illnesses—and to prescribe sometimes unnecessary or harmful medications. Respected author and practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition, and returned with an unsettling tale. Exposing the deeply flawed process behind the DSM-5’s compilation, The Book of Woe reveals how the manual turns suffering into a commodity—and made the APA its own biggest beneficiary.