Building a New Community Psychology of Mental Health: Spaces, Places, People and Activities

ISBN-13: 9781137360984 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 199 str.

Carl Walker; Paul Hanna; Angie Hart

Opis

This book explores a range of alternative community based approaches to working with mental distress.Mental health and distress are issues many individuals have to deal with on a daily basis. Whilst formal health provisions provide some respite for individuals suffering from mental distress, the system is far from perfect for all. Drawing on recent developments in critical psychology the chapters propose a new paradigm for mental health, presenting a range of alternative community based approaches, with a clear focus on the spaces, places, people and activities that can be useful in helping to deal with mental distress. Written in an accessible and engaging style this book will appeal to academics, practitioners and policy makers interested in community and social approaches to mental health.

Recenzje

"Carl Walker, Angie Hart, and Paul Hanna provide an insightful and at times humorous (Martian visitor) critique of the mental health system in the United Kingdom for people with 'mental distress' and 'misery.' The authors' utilization of case studies adds a human face to problems and issues confronting individuals with severe and chronic mental illness. While research based, the authors' deliberate and engaging writing style would appeal to diverse groups that might include policy makers, practitioners, academics, and students." (David B. Jones, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 62 (51), December, 2017)

Spis treści

Chapter 1. The Flawed Assumptions of Psychology and Psychiatry: A Martian Analysis.- Chapter 2. Social Approaches to Distress: From Enclosures to Fluid Spaces.- Chapter 3. ‘Bike Minded’ - Normal Human Encounters (on Bikes).- Chapter 5. ‘Helping Them Hold Up Their World’: Parents of Children with Complex Needs and the Beneficent Organisation.- Chapter 6. I’m Singing in the Rain.- Chapter 7: ‘A Place to Be’: A Cut and Shut of the Brighton Unemployed Families Centre Project.- Chapter 8. The Joy of Sex.- Chapter 9. Some Possible Directions for the Future.  

O autorze

Carl Walker is Principle Lecturer in Psychology and course leader for the MA Community Psychology at the University of Brighton, UK.

Angie Hart is Professor of Child, Family and Community Health at the University of Brighton, UK.

Paul Hanna is Chartered Psychologist and Lecturer in Sustainable Tourism at the University of Surrey, UK.

Blurb

This book provides a much-needed account of informal community-based approaches to working with mental distress. It starts from the premise that contemporary mainstream psychiatry and psychology struggle to capture how distress results from complex embodied arrays of social experiences that are embedded within specific historical, cultural, political and economic settings. The authors challenge mainstream understandings of mental health that position a naive public in need of mental health literacy. Instead it is clear that a considerable amount of invaluable mental distress work is undertaken in spaces in our communities that are not understood as mental health treatments. This book represents one of the first attempts to position these kinds of spaces at the center of how we understand and address problems of mental distress and suffering. The chapters draw on case studies from the UK and abroad to point toward an exciting new paradigm based on informal community and socially oriented approaches to mental health. Written in an unusually accessible and engaging style, this book will appeal to social science students, academics, practitioners and policy makers interested in community and social approaches to mental health.