Feminist icon Phyllis Chesler's pioneering work, Women and Madness, remains startlingly relevant today, nearly fifty years since its first publication in 1972. With over 2.5 million copies sold, this landmark book is unanimously regarded as the definitive work on the subject of women's psychology. Now back in print, this completely revised and updated edition adds perspectives on eating disorders, postpartum depression, biological psychology, important feminist political findings, female genital mutilation, and more.

This book explores the gendered experience of disability. It investigates how women with disabilities fare in society focusing on the experiences of women and their interactions with family, society and medical and legal institutions. Women with disabilities face unprecedented levels of violence, oppression and marginalisation in their daily lives as well as a lack of visibility, proper care and opportunities for socio-economic development. This book examines the reasons and consequences of the stigmatisation of disabilities and neurodivergence, denial of proper care, and various forms of exclusion and violence women with disabilities face both within and outside of their homes. It brings together the perspectives of academicians and activists that try and understand the various challenges faced by women with disabilities and highlights the fight for their right to autonomy, respect, equality, and justice. Filling the gap in the existing feminist research, this revised edition seeks to influence the way in which society treats women with disabilities and will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the field of women’s rights, disability rights, rehabilitation, social policy, and the body.

A comprehensive, up-to-date and evidence-based review of women's mental health, written by leading experts, for mental health clinicians.

"The book, Women with Serious Mental Illness: Gender-Sensitive and Recovery-Oriented Care, calls attention to a topic and population that has been overlooked in research and psychotherapy - women with serious mental illnesses (i.e., schizophrenia, severe depression, bipolar disorder, and complex posttraumatic stress disorder). Women with Serious Mental Illness focuses on the history of mistreatment, marginalization, and oppression they have encountered in the general public and within the mental health system. This book provides an overview of recovery-oriented care for women with serious mental illness - a process of seeking hope, empowerment, and self-determination beyond the effects of mental illness. Chapters provide a historical overview of the treatment of women with mental illness, their resilience and recovery experiences, as well as issues pertaining to relationships, work, class, culture, trauma, and sexuality. This book also offers the new model of Gender-Sensitive and Recovery Oriented Care (G-ROC) for working with this group from a gender-sensitive framework. The book is a useful tool for mental health educators and providers, with each chapter containing case studies, clinical strategies lists, discussion questions, experiential activities, diagrams, and worksheets that can be completed with clients, students, and peers"--

This book argues that while notions of trauma in mental health hold promise for the advancement of women’s rights, the mainstreaming of trauma treatments and therapies has had mixed implications, sometimes replacing genuine social change efforts with new forms of female oppression by psychiatry. It contends that trauma interventions often represent a "business as usual" approach within psychiatry, with women being expected to comply with rigid treatment protocols, accepting the advice given by trauma "experts" that they are mentally unstable and that they must learn to manage the effects of violence in the absence of any real changes to their circumstances or resources. A critique of trauma treatment in its current form, Trauma, Women’s Mental Health, and Social Justice recommends practical steps towards a socio-political perspective on trauma which passionately re-engages with feminist values and activist principles.

Sometimes insanity is the sanest response to an unbearable reality.It's 1958 when Emilena Lamb, with no prior history of medical or mental problems, arrives at Bridgeton Psychiatric Hospital in a catatonic stupor. Sam Atkins, the psychiatrist who admits her, is baffled. Emilena's husband insists she's always been the perfect wife and that theirs is a very happy home, which interviews with friends and family seem to support.So what happened to Emilena?When she doesn't improve during her first month in the hospital, she's transferred to Summerland, a residential facility for "female hysterics" run by the sensuous and eccentric May Manley. Here, the laws which govern modern medicine do not apply, as May employs such therapies as lunar observation and birding to help her "guests re-root in the Earth." When Sam, desperate to heal Emilena, finds himself caught between May's unorthodox yet apparently effective approach to healing and the invasive, potentially harmful procedures prescribed by his colleagues, he's forced to question the beliefs on which he has built his entire professional and personal life.Fortunately, the magic of Summerland isn't limited to its patients ...Going Widdershins is a moving, bittersweet tale of mystery, love, yearning, and transformation.

In this volume the authors examine the variety of ways in which gender affects the stress process.

How can ethnographic studies be generalized, in contrast to concentrating on the individual case? Noblit and Hare propose a new method for synthesizing from qualitative studies: meta-ethnography. After citing the criteria to be used in comparing qualitative research projects, the authors define the ways these can then be aggregated to create more cogent syntheses of research. Using examples from numerous studies ranging from ethnographic work in educational settings to the Mead-Freeman controversy over Samoan youth, Meta-Ethnography offers useful procedural advice from both comparative and cumulative analyses of qualitative data. This provocative volume will be read with interest by researchers and students in qualitative research methods, ethnography, education, sociology, and anthropology. "After defining metaphor and synthesis, these authors provide a step-by-step program that will allow the researcher to show similarity (reciprocal translation), difference (refutation), or similarity at a higher level (lines or argument synthesis) among sample studies....Contain(s) valuable strategies at a seldom-used level of analysis." --Contemporary Sociology "The authors made an important contribution by reframing how we think of ethnography comparison in a way that is compatible with the new developments in interpretive ethnography. Meta-Ethnography is well worth consulting for the problem definition it offers." --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "This book had to be written and I am pleased it was. Someone needed to break the ice and offer a strategy for summarizing multiple ethnographic studies. Noblit and Hare have done a commendable job of giving the research community one approach for doing so. Further, no one else can now venture into this area of synthesizing qualitative studies without making references to and positioning themselves vis-a-vis this volume." -Educational Studies

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.