It is common sense that our survival as individuals depends on the survival of our physical bodies. However, common sense has been medicalised. Terms such as 'road rage' and 'premenstrual syndrome' sound like medical problems and suggest that it is affected individuals, rather than experiences or circumstances that require treatment.
Without denying their importance, Rival Truths challenges four basic common sense views of health and illness and offers rival social psychological explanations. The primacy of biological facts is challenged by looking at the effects of social psychological influences, such as those mediated by stress. The assumption that medical practices are scientific is challenged by evidence that they also reflect and recreate social constructions. The assumption that medical advances are the most effective way to combat disease is questioned as their success may rely on changes in beliefs or behaviour, and finally, critical analyses suggest that medical treatment can sometimes be to the disadvantage of patients.
Lindsay St. Claire has helped to raise awareness that health problems might be caused by social arrangements, not biological dysfunction. Thus, social psychology might suggest new ways to enhance health status which do not depend on medical breakthroughs. This book will be of interest for health psychology students, medical students and anyone involved in caring professions.

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Deaf adults and children, like their hearing counterparts, experience a full range of mental health problems. They develop psychoses, sink into deep depressions, abuse alcohol and drugs, commit sexual offenses, or simply have trouble adjusting to new life situations. But when a deaf client appears on the doorstep of an ordinary hospital, residential facility, clinic, or office, panic often ensues. Mental Health Care of Deaf People: A Culturally Affirmative Approach, offers much-needed help to clinical and counseling psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, and other mental health professionals--and to their program administrators. The editors, a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and the authors, leading authorities with a variety of expertises, systematically review the special needs of deaf patients, particularly those who regard themselves as "culturally Deaf," and provide professionals with the tools they need to meet those needs. Among these tools is an extensive "library" of pictorial questionnaires and information sheets developed by one of the very few psychiatric units in the country devoted to the deaf. These handouts greatly simplify the processes involved in the diagnosis and treatment of people who in many cases are not good readers--for example, explaining medication and inquiring about side-effects. The handouts are reproduced on downloadable resources, to enable purchasers to print out and use copies in their work. This comprehensive clinical guide and its accompanying downloadable resources constitute vital resources for all those who seek to provide sensitive, effective mental health care to deaf people.

Radiation and the effects of radioactivity have been known for more than 100 years. International research spanning this period has yielded a great deal of information about radiation and its biological effects and this activity has resulted in the discovery of many applications in medicine and industry including cancer therapy, medical diagnostics and quality control during manufacturing.
After Chernobyl, there has been a tendency for the public to regard radiation as harmful, even in situations where the doses are equal to, or below the natural level. Radiation and Health aims to increase awareness by presenting a balanced view of the nature of radiation and its existence in the environment, as well as discussing its effects on plants, animals and humans. It provides a survey of current knowledge from the discovery and basic theory of radiation and radioactivity to more recent developments concerned with the nature of radiation and its effect on biological systems. Numerous examples, exercises and diagrams are included to make this book accessible to non-specialists.

Social investment is part of a strategy to modernize the European welfare states by focusing on human resource development throughout the life-course, while ensuring financial sustainability. The last decades have seen cost containment in areas such as pensions and health care, but also expansion in areas such as early childhood education, higher education and active labor market policies. This development is linked to a Social Investment (SI) approach, which should, ideally, promote a better reconciliation of work and family life, high levels of labor market productivity and strong economic growth, while also mitigating social inequality. However, institutionalization of policies that may mainly benefit the middle class has some unintended effects, such as perpetuating new inequalities and the creation of other Matthew effects. While research on the rise of the social investment state as a new paradigm of social policy-making for European welfare states has grown significantly, there are still important gaps in the literature. The chapters in this book address the controversies around social investment related to inequalities, individual preferences and the politics of social investment. This volume is therefore organized around policies, politics and outcomes. The contributing authors bring together expert knowledge and different perspectives on SI from several disciplines, with original path-breaking empirical contributions, addressing some key questions that thus far are unanswered, related to Matthew effects, inequalities, ambiguities of social investment and institutional complementarities. Furthermore, it is the first volume that covers the core policy areas of social investment: childcare, education and labour market policies. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

The material in this book is an expansion of a lecture given at the Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., on May 15, 1933. I have thought it best to leave it in the somewhat informal discourse of the lecture platform. References to the literature, and other annotations, are numbered consecutively and placed together at the end of the book. It should be pointed out here at the start, as it is in the text, that the author is not a medical man, but merely a biologist greatly interested in human biology; aware of his deficiencies in knowledge and experience consequent upon not having an equally lively sense of his inalienable right as a biologist to study man, the most interesting of all animals.

This edited collection emphasizes the role of social work practice and research related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) aging. It highlights LGBT aging from a gerontological social work perspective by incorporating key values of the profession such as cultural competence, dignity, strengths, and resilience of the population while it offers an important contribution to the body of knowledge to the interdisciplinary field of aging. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Gerontological Social Work.

For the growing number of health professionals who are engaged in processes of evaluation in a variety of contexts within the world of healthcare, The Evaluation Handbook is an easy-to-use resource. Encouraging an evidence-based approach to practice, it provides:
* guidelines on how to design and evaluate an intervention
* examples of good practice
* reliable and easy-to-use measures
* advice on how to work effectively.

The handbook is designed to prompt self-evaluation and group project evaluation. It illustrates how simple evaluation methods can help to break down the divisions between research and practice and how more practitioners can apply such methods to improve the quality of care as well as the treatments and services which they offer their patients and clients. The examples, drawn from clinical settings, community practice and work in the voluntary sector, illustrate the kind of evaluation that can be undertaken by a small-scale team or a single practitioner with limited resources.
The Evaluation Handbook will be a useful source of reference for those new to evaluation as well as more experienced managers and researchers.

After World War I, housing was one of many pressing issues facing the country with multiple families often crowded in together in inadequate housing. This had a dramatic impact on health with increasing problems such as tuberculosis and malnutrition. Originally published in 1919, this study aimed to identify the ways in which defective housing impacted on health in the family with a particular focus on rickets in children in the East end of London and the developmental issues resulting from it. This title will be of interest to students of Medical History and Health and Social Care.

Understanding Child and Adolescent Grief incorporates theory, clinical applications, case studies, and current research on contemporary models of grief pertaining to children and adolescents. The integration of developmental perspectives, attachment theory, and neurobiological implications provides a thorough summary of the many factors that can affect a child's growth and development, and the subsequent influence on grief expression. Chapters explore relevant social topics rarely addressed in other texts, such as the death of African American men, suicide among Aboriginal youth in Canada, death/suicide among LGBTQ youth and social media's influence. Also included are practical tips for helping professionals who want to better understand how grief and loss affect children and teens, as well as a meditation guide that provides concrete opportunities for growth and healing.

First published in 1998 , This timely book describes the challenges that need to be met in bringing together health and social services into a partnership to create effective and responsive services. It presents the reader with both conceptual frameworks and practical examples on how change can be managed and the momentum maintained towards the development of a quality service. The authors present practical examples and reflect on what worked and what was not successful. Over twenty writers (staff and managers, senior and junior, qualified and unqualified) describe focused work in particular areas which will be of interest to any service for this user group. Throughout, the emphasis is on how to deliver an accessible good quality service and how this can be safeguarded in the future. Fifty years after the establishment of the NHS, and nearly twenty five years since the establishment of British Social Services departments, this book articulates a modern, practical and principled vision of community based services to vulnerable people.

First published in 1998, this volume emerged in the context of rapidly developing nursing and health care fields and features contributions on areas in the NHS and private nursing including nurses' pay and education, the gender balance in the nursing labour market, working patterns, employment contracts and turnover. It is part of a series of monographs offers up-to-date reports of recently completed research projects in the fields of nursing and health care. The aim of the series is to report studies that have relevance to contemporary nursing and health care practice. It includes reports of research into aspects of clinical nursing care, management and education. The series is of interest to all nurses and health care workers, researchers, managers and educators in the field.

This is a new and expanded edition of a classic case-study in the medicalization of ADHD, originally published in 1976. The book centres on an empirical study of the process of identifying hyperactive children, providing a perceptive and accessible introduction to the concepts and issues involved. In this revised edition, Peter Conrad sets the original study in context, demonstrating the continuing relevance of his research. He highlights the issues at stake, outlining recent changes in our understanding of ADHD and reviewing recent sociological research. Peter Conrad is Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences at Brandeis University, USA. He has written extensively in the area of medical sociology, publishing nine books and over eighty articles and chapters.

Within a variety of practice environments, health professionals often experience feelings of disgust and repulsion towards the presence of an abject object. Cadaverous, sick, disabled bodies, troubled minds, wounds, vomit and so forth are all part of health and care work and threaten the clean and proper bodies of those who undertake it, yet this 'unclean' side of health work is rarely accounted for in academic literature. This volume employs the work of Julia Kristeva through a range of case studies drawn from care and nursing settings around the world. It brings together work from researchers and practitioners within the social and health sciences, the caring professions and psychotherapy, to expose and highlight the important impact of the concept of abjection, which historically has been silenced in the health sciences.

Dementia: The Basics provides the reader with a clear and compassionate introduction to dementia and an accessible guide to dealing with different parts of the dementia journey, from pre-diagnosis and diagnosis to post-diagnostic support, increasing care needs and end of life care. Co-authored by an academic, a person living with dementia and a family carer, the book endeavours to raise awareness of dementia, challenge stereotypical and negative ideas about what it means to have dementia and champion a society where people living with dementia can be active as they wish for as long as possible. The authors present an overview of current research at each step of the dementia journey as well as including knowledge from lived experience, enhancing understanding and challenging thinking about what it might be like to live with a diagnosis or to care for a loved one. As a whole, the book emphasises the importance of prioritising the person living with dementia, as well as considering the impact of what any initiative or action might mean for them, their families and their care supporters. Offering both an accessible introduction to dementia and practical tools, this book will be ideal for health and social care professionals, students of social care, health care and nursing, people with dementia, carers and anyone wanting to understand more about the condition.

Ageing is widely recognised as one of the social and economic challenges in the contemporary, globalised world, for which scientific, technological and medical solutions are continuously sought. This book proposes that science and technology also played a crucial role in the creation and transformation of the ageing society itself. Drawing on existing work on science, technology and ageing in sociology, anthropology, history of science, geography and social gerontology, Science, Technology and the Ageing Society explores the complex, interweaving relationship between expertise, scientific and technological standards and social, normatively embedded age identities. Through a series of case studies focusing on older people, science and technology, medical research about ageing and ageing-related illnesses, and the role of expertise in the management of ageing populations, Moreira challenges the idea that aging is a problem for the individual and society. Tracing the epistemic and technological infrastructures that underpin multiple of ways of aging, this timely volume is a crucial tool for undergraduate and graduate students interested in social gerontology, health and social care, sociology of aging, science and technology studies and medical sociology.

Complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) has become big business internationally, in particular with regards to a range of women's health issues. With this context in mind, Women's Health and Complementary and Integrative Medicine constitutes a valuable and timely resource for those looking to understand, initiate and expand CIM research and evidence-based debate with regards to a wide range of women's health care issues. The collection brings together leading international CIM researchers from Australia, the USA, the UK, Germany and Canada, with backgrounds and expertise in health social science, statistics, qualitative methodology, clinial trial design, clinical pharmacology, health services research and public health. Contributors draw upon their own CIM research work and experience to explain and review core research and practice issues pertinent to the contemporary field of CIM and its future development with regards to women's health. The book outlines the core issues, challenges and opportunities facing the CIM-women's health field and its study and will provide insight and inspiration for those practising, studying and/or researching the contemporary relations between CIM and women's health and health care.

Life at Home for People with a Dementia provides an evidence-based and readable account of improving life at home for people with a dementia and their families. There are estimated to be 47 million people with a dementia worldwide, the majority of whom will live, or want to live, in their own home. Yet there is a major shortcoming in available knowledge on what life is like for people with a dementia living at home. Most research focuses on care in hospitals or care homes, and takes a medical perspective. This book bridges this gap in knowledge by providing a comprehensive and critical overview of the best available evidence on enabling people with a dementia to live well at home from the viewpoint of those living with the condition, and in the context of global policy drivers on ageing and health, as well as technological advances. The book includes chapters on citizenships - that is, the diversity of people living with a dementia - enabling life at home, rethinking self-management, the ethics and care of people with a dementia at home, technological care and citizenship, and sharing responsibilities. It concludes with a care manifesto in which we set out a vision for improving life at home for people with a dementia that covers the areas of professional practice, education and care research. By covering a wide range of interrelated topics to advance understanding and practice as to how people with a dementia from diverse backgrounds can be supported to live well at home, this book provides a synthesised, critical and readable understanding of the complexities and risks involved.

First published in 1998, this book covers a variety of health issues in the contemporary Middle east. Its thirteen chapters, contributed by a total of 23 authors and co-authors, reflect several different disciplines relevant for health studies, including epidemiology, economics and anthropology. In the field of reproductive health, there are chapters on maternal health indicators, fertility, infertility and the utilization of family planning services. In the field of infectious disease there are chapters on schistosomiasis, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and Rift Valley Fever. Several different parts of the Middle East and North Africa are covered, including Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. Problems of reproductive health and infectious disease in the region are seen to be more serious than generally recognised. There are significant cultural and political obstacles in both areas. A particular need is for greater empowerment of women as both clients and providers within the health care systems.

First published in 1999, Maruyama explores some significant difficulties and differences in bringing the western hospice philosophy to the Japanese medical culture. Whilst not giving any definite answers, this study determines what some of the critical questions that need to be considered into Japanese medicine, as Mayuyama argues without defining these questions to begin with we cannot find appropriate solutions.

Published in 1998. This book brings together both the history of community involvement and health and ideas and proposals for further developing the potential of this approach. It explores the roots and branches of community involvement, drawing together different strands from within and outside the NHS. It explores the impact of the rapid changes in the NHS and in local government on local communities and patients and ways in which current policy can enhance and enable the general public to be more involved in their own health and effective service provision. Ideas, models and case studies are used to illustrate practical ways in which skills and knowledge can be enhanced.

First published in 1997, this work makes a substantial reexamination of the social processes behind the labelling of patients in hospital care. Taking an interpretive perspective, the author analyzes the social construction of patient labels identifying strategies for and the consequences of giving and receipt of 'good' and 'bad' labels. He shows how the rich data of truly participant observation in the tradition of reflexive ethnography can powerfully illuminate the experiences and actions of both patients and their nurses. It is a critical analysis of key work in this field. Professor Johnson demonstrates the redundancy of trait theories of social judgment, offering a more complex and negotiated reality in which patient labels form a part of a rich web of unequal power relations between nurses and their clients.

First published in 1998, this book contributes to our understanding of emergent and resurgent infectious diseases and health ecology in developing areas through detailed spatial and temporal analysis of recent cholera and bacillary dysentery epidemics in Mozambique. The book examines the influence of environmental, demographic and socio-economic changes on the nature and context of cholera and bacillary dysentery. It provides a detailed background to the two diseases based on their ecology and contemporary status in human communities together with analysis of extensive primary field data centered on three key urban areas in central Mozambique. Influences are weighed up against factors relating to the individual ecologies of the different pathogens, primary subsistence, and the impacts of Mozambique's history of conflict and development policies on human vulnerability. The extensive case study material is used to provide clear indications of appropriate ways forward in the field of environmental health management.

The Toxic Schoolhouse is a collection of articles on chemical hazards endangering students, teachers, and staff in the education system of the United States and Canada. Some of the articles were originally published in a special issue of New Solutions: A Journal of Occupational and Environmental Policy, but all have been updated and several new articles have been added. The book is organized in three sections. The first describes problems ranging from the failures of coordination, monitoring, and siting of school buildings to the hazards of exposure to toxic substances, including lead and PCBs. The second section captures the voices of activists seeking change and describes community and union organizing efforts to improve school conditions. The third section covers policy "solutions." The authors include academics, union staff and rank-and-file activists, parent organization leaders, and public health professionals.