Our Encounters with Madness - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1906254389 ISBN 13: 9781906254384

Publisher: PCCS Books, 2014

Synopsis

A collection of mental health service user, carer and psychiatric survivor narratives. Unusually, the narratives are unmediated hence there are no biomedical or psychotherapeutic commentaries to capture, tame or sanitise the words of these the experts by experience. Of interest to students of mental health, particularly those interested in first person experience.

About this title

About the Author:

Dr Alec Grant is Reader in Narrative Mental Health in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Brighton. He is widely published in the fields of ethnography, autoethnography, clinical supervision, cognitive behavioural psychotherapy, and communication and interpersonal skills. His current and developing research and scholarly interests coalesce in the area of narrative inquiry and demedicalizing mental health. Francis Biley is Associate Professor at the University of Bournemouth. He has particular methodological interests in historiography, autoethnography, unitary appreciative inquiry and using the arts and humanities in health care. Clinically, he has interests in the built care environment, and in the service user movement in mental health and adult care. Hannah Walker is the Chairperson of the Dorset Mental Health Forum which, amongst other things, offers advocacy services and promotes recovery and wellbeing.

Review:

All the authors of these stories have suffered: some from what was inflicted on them as children, some from demons that seem to have been simply part of who they are or were and some the failure - at worst betrayal - of what are supposed to be helping professions. The authors have also found resources for survivial, and change, and the discovery of purpose in their lives - Which is why I understand this book as an exemplar of narrative healing. Professional intervention might begin with offering people the great gift of examples not to imitate, but from which to draw resources, which is what this book does. Professor Author Frank, from the foreword. The various authors in this book are engaged in making sense of their encounters with madness, by telling stories. Read those stories and you may well appreciate something of 'what' they have encountered. Reflect on their stories and you may well appreciate better your own 'self ' and your myriad encounters with life and its inherent madness. Professor Phil Barker, from the Foreword

About this edition

• Publisher: PCCS Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1906254389
• ISBN 13: 9781906254384
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 253
• Editor: Grant Alec, Biley Fran, Walker Hannah