Audit is an essential activity for all psychiatrists. Involvement in audit must be evidenced by consultants for revalidation and by trainees in their Annual Review of Competence Progression (ARCP). This book will therefore be relevant for psychiatrists of all grades. It aims to help ease the audit process by offering tried and tested recipes for conducting audits in clinical services. All the audits in this book have been undertaken by the authors and it therefore provides useful practical advice for carrying out the audits in day-to-day practice.

As an Education Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP) or Children's Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP), you have to think on your feet, manage a caseload, deal with emotional distress and try and not get indigestion as you cram down a sandwich on your way to your next session. This down-to-earth survival guide helps trainees and newly qualified practitioners cope with the stressful demands of these new and challenging roles. Full of case examples and practical tools and strategies, this book will give you the confidence to assess, set goals, and deliver effective interventions for anxiety and depression. It also provides invaluable support on tricky topics such as disclosures of risk and safeguarding issues, working effectively with parents, dealing with resistance and conflict, caring for yourself, and signposting when a situation is outside the remit of your role.

Explore women s first-person experiences with the mental health establishment This unique contemporary anthology of women s experiential writing shares women s realities, perceptions, and experiences (positive and negative) within the therapeutic environment. These artistic expressions of personal experience will help women understand their own encounters in a new light. They are also instructive and enlightening for any practitioner working with women in a mental health setting. Charlotte Perkins Gilman s famous short story (included here), The Yellow Wallpaper, which inspired this title, has come to represent the struggle of contemporary women to be understood by the therapeutic milieu from whom they seek psychological support and psychiatric treatment. An icon of feminist writing, the 1892 story symbolizes affirmation and validation for the female experience regarding mental health and therapy. This anthology, in the spirit of Gilman s work, gives voice to today s women so that their own encounters with the mental health establishment can be validating and affirming to others. It will also enlighten those in the helping professions as they extend their services to women in a time of growing need and shrinking resources.In addition to The Yellow Wallpaper and a foreword and afterword by noted psychiatric professionals, Women s Encouters with the Mental Health Establishment: Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper also contains works by authors including: Sylvia Plath Kate Millett Anne Sexton Lauren Slater Martha Manning Elayne Clift and many more Through prose and poetry, the contributors to this volume offer a creative, artistic, and highly readable contribution to the literatures of women s studies and psychology Visit the author s website at http: //www.sover.net/ eclift.

Explore women's first-person experiences with the mental health establishment!This unique contemporary anthology of women's experiential writing shares women's realities, perceptions, and experiences (positive and negative) within the therapeutic environment. These artistic expressions of personal experience will help women understand their own encounters in a new light. They are also instructive and enlightening for any practitioner working with women in a mental health setting. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous short story (included here), The Yellow Wallpaper, which inspired this title, has come to represent the struggle of contemporary women to be understood by the therapeutic milieu from whom they seek psychological support and psychiatric treatment. An icon of feminist writing, the 1892 story symbolizes affirmation and validation for the female experience regarding mental health and therapy. This anthology, in the spirit of Gilman's work, gives voice to today's women so that their own encounters with the mental health establishment can be validating and affirming to others. It will also enlighten those in the helping professions as they extend their services to women in a time of growing need and shrinking resources.In addition to The Yellow Wallpaper and a foreword and afterword by noted psychiatric professionals, Women's Encouters with the Mental Health Establishment: Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper also contains works by authors including: Sylvia Plath Kate Millett Anne Sexton Lauren Slater Martha Manning Elayne Clift and many more!Through prose and poetry, the contributors to this volume offer a creative, artistic, and highly readable contribution to the literatures of women'sstudies and psychology!Visit the author's website at http: //www.sover.net/~eclift.

Start your healing journey to forgive or seek forgiveness—buoyed by spiritual and psychological insights and practical steps. "We have both witnessed the power of forgiveness as well as the devastating sense of loss that comes from withholding forgiveness. We invite you to journey with us as we explore all the dimensions of forgiveness, learning how to apply this gift to yourself and your life, as well as using it to guide others toward a happier, more peaceful existence." —from the Introduction Everyone seeks forgiveness at some point in their lives—in families, from friends, in workplaces, in communities or from ourselves—but we often falter when we discover the practice takes more than simply saying or hearing “I forgive you.” In this dynamic look at the process of forgiveness, conflict resolution experts Myra Warren Isenhart and Michael Spangle look at what is really keeping you from forgiving or seeking forgiveness. In addition to focusing on the soulful benefits of forgiveness, they also draw on insights from many fields—communication, psychology, counseling and theology, as well as their own original research—to explore the mental and emotional barriers in your path. Learn how to: Make distinctions between forgiveness, apology and reconciliation Identify the conditions that make reconciliation appropriate or inappropriate Understand the elements of an effective apology Extend forgiveness to yourself Assist others in their own forgiveness journey

The system isn’t broken, Mr. Nibbles. It was designed this way. Theodore is a bear with wild mood swings. When he is up, he carves epic poetry into tree trunks. When he is down, he paints sad faces on rocks and turtle shells. In search of prescription medications that will bring stability to his life, Theodore finds a job with health insurance benefits. He gets the meds, but when he can’t pay the psychiatrist’s bill, he becomes lost in the Labyrinth of Health Insurance Claims. This witty and colorful tale follows the comical exploits of Theodore, a loveable and relatable bear, as he copes with bipolar disorder, navigates the inequities of capitalist society, founds a commune, and becomes an activist, all the while accompanied by a memorable cast of characters—fat-cat insurance CEOs, a wrongfully convicted snake, raccoons with tommy guns, and an unemployed old dog who cannot learn new tricks. Entertaining, whimsical, and bitingly satirical, Bipolar Bear is a fable for grownups that manages the delicate balance of addressing society’s ills while simultaneously presenting a hopeful vision for the world.

Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1971 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

The twenty-first-century psychotherapist can no longer be constrained by specific schools of practice or limited reservoirs of knowledge. But this new "era of information" needs to be integrated and made manageable for every practitioner. This book helps therapists learn more about this new knowledge and how to apply it effectively. In this single-volume learning resource, Richard Hill and Matthew Dahlitz introduce practitioners to the many elements that create our psychology. From basic neuroscience to body-brain systems and genetic processes, therapists will discover how to become more "response-able" to their clients. Topics include neurobiology, genetics, key therapeutic practices to treat anxiety, depression, trauma and other disorders; memory; mirror neurons and empathy, and more. All are presented with case studies and treatment applications.

For many psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, the clinical review is the most burdensome and disagreeable part of managed care. In that review they are asked, by a representative of the managed care company, to justify their patient's need for care and to defend the treatment they are providing. Clinicians usually feel at a disadvantage in these discussions because they are never quite sure what information the reviewer needs to approve the patient's care. This does not have to be the case.

The goal of this book is to teach psychiatrists, mental health professionals, and administrators how reviewers think and how to conceptualize, present, and document clinical care in a manner that greatly increases the likelihood that reviewers will approve their request for care. Beginning with five questions that must be answered in every managed care review, the author discusses the following key topics and many others. - Presenting your case to a reviewer -- How to effectively present requests for inpatient, partial hospital, and substance abuse care and avoid common mistakes that decrease the likelihood that your request will be approved. How to answer the four clinical questions that must be addressed in every review even if they are not asked by the reviewer.- Negotiating with the reviewer -- How to negotiate with a reviewer who is reluctant to approve the care you request. - Writing effective notes -- How to write effective clinical notes in the patient's record that substantiate your request for care and increase the likelihood that it will be approved.- Dealing with unethical reviewers -- How to identify and take action against unethical reviewers and managed care companies that are insensitive to your patient's clinical needs.- Appealing denials of care -- How to appeal denials of care when you do not agree with the reviewer's decision.

These and many other important issues are highlighted in brief vignettes illustrating a clinician's presentation of a patient's case and a typical reviewer's comments. This tremendously useful volume will be welcomed by every mental health care practitioner who must negotiate the current managed care landscape.

Improving the measurement of symptoms of emotional disorders has been an important goal of mental health research. In direct response to this need, the Expanded Version of the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms (IDAS-II) was developed to assess symptom dimensions underlying psychological disorders. Unlike other scales that serve as screening instruments used for diagnostic purposes, the IDAS-II is not closely tethered to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); rather, its scales cut across DSM boundaries to examine psychopathology in a dimensional rather than a categorical way. Developed by authors David Watson and Michael O'Hara, the IDAS-II has broad implications for our understanding of psychopathology. Understanding the Emotional Disorders is the first manual for how to use the IDAS-II and examines important, replicable symptom dimensions contained within five adjacent diagnostic classes in the DSM-5: depressive disorders, bipolar and related disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, and trauma- and stressor-related disorders. It reviews problems and limitations associated with traditional, diagnosis-based approaches to studying psychopathology and establishes the theoretical and clinical value of analyzing specific types of symptoms within the emotional disorders. It demonstrates that several of these disorders contain multiple symptom dimensions that clearly can be differentiated from one another. Moreover, these symptom dimensions are highly robust and generalizable and can be identified in multiple types of data, including self-ratings, semi-structured interviews, and clinicians' ratings. Furthermore, individual symptom dimensions often have strikingly different correlates, such as varying levels of criterion validity, incremental predictive power, and diagnostic specificity. Consequently, it is more informative to examine these specific types of symptoms, rather than the broader disorders. The book concludes with the development of a more comprehensive, symptom-based model that subsumes various forms of psychopathology-including sleep disturbances, eating- and weight-related problems, personality pathology, psychosis/thought disorder, and hypochondriasis-beyond the emotional disorders.

This is an attempt to address the ethical issues raised by mental illness and its treatment by focusing on the question of autonomy. The mentally ill may be regarded as non-autonomous by virtue of irrationality, which may result in treatment models which may deny them a voice. As a counter to this, some have moved to the other extreme and argued that the mentally ill must be regarded as fully autonomous in all circumstances, and consequently that all their wishes regarding treatment must be respected. This book examines the ethical consequences of such simplistic approaches approaches towards autonomy and mental illness, and considers the ethical issues raised by specific forms of treatment. It is suggested in conclusion that improvement in the care and treatment of the mentally ill requires not only a fundamental change in social attitudes but also less impoverished conception of autonomy than some of those currently employed.

J. Stuart Ablon and Alisha R. Pollastri, authors of The School Discipline Fix, present this Quick Reference Guide to their Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) approach for changing child behaviour in mental health and home settings. This must-have resource distills the multistep approach into six easy-to-follow panels, in the convenient form of an 8.5"x11" laminated card for in-the-moment reference. Here, clinical staff, parents, guardians and other CPS trainees will find crucial information about the guiding philosophy of the approach; the cognitive skills that contribute to children's behaviour; the key aspects of a CPS assessment; information on planning and prioritising the treatment; and step-by-step instructions for completing CPS itself.

This book explores the development of mental health systems in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) of Samoa and Tonga through an examination of several policy transfer events from the colonial to the contemporary. Beginning in the 1990s, mental health became an area of global policy concern as reflected in concerted international organisation and bilateral aid and development agendas, most notably those of the World Bank, World Health Organization, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand. This book highlights how Tonga and Samoa both reformed their respective mental health systems during these years, after relatively long periods of stagnation. Using recent scholarship concerning public policy transfer, this book explains these policy outcomes and expands it to include consideration of the historical institutional dimensions evidenced by contemporary mental health systems. This book considers three distinct levels of policy implicated in mental health system transfer processes from developed to developing nations: colonial authority and influence; decolonisation processes; and the global development agenda surrounding health systems. In the process, the author argues that there are in fact three levels of policy change that must be accounted for in examining contemporary policy change. These policy levels include formal policy transfers, which tend to be prescriptive, involving professional problem construction and the designation of appropriate state apparatus for curative or custodial care provision; quasi-formal transfers, which tend to be aspirational and involve policy instruments developed through collaborative, participatory processes; and informal transfers that tend to be normative and include practices by professional actors in delivering service merged with traditional cultural beliefs as to disease aetiology as well as reflecting a deep understanding of the cultural context within which the services will be delivered. This book argues that a renewed focus on the importance of public policy and government institutional capacity is necessary to ensure human rights and justice are secured.

Until recently it has been assumed that people who experience severe and enduring mental health problems are unable to work, unless or until they recover. That assumption is now being challenged by international research demonstrating that, with the right support, people can succeed in finding and keeping a job even when they continue to need support from mental health services. New Thinking about Mental Health and Employment draws together the research undertaken to date and combines it with mental health service users' perspectives on the workplace to validate key points. Vital reading at both policy and practitioner levels, this book will be of great value to mental health nurses, social workers, general practitioners, psychiatrists and occupational therapists. It will also be of interest to employment advisors, government departments, commissioners, and policy makers and shapers.

Bastien is eight years old, and his mother is ill. She often has what his father and grandparents call "episodes." She screams and fights, scratches and spits, and has to be carted away to specialized clinics for frequent treatments. Bastien doesn't like it when she goes, because when she comes home, she isn't the same. She has no feelings, no desires, and not much interest in him. According to the doctors, Bastien's mother suffers from "bipolar disorder with schizophrenic tendencies," but he prefers to imagine her as a comic-book heroine, like Jean Grey, who may become Dark Phoenix and explode in a superhuman fury at any moment. Based on the creator's own childhood experiences, The Parakeet is the story of a boy whose only refuge from life's harsh realities lies in his imagination. In his eyes, we see the confusion and heartache he feels as he watches his mother's illness worsen and the treatments fail. Through his eyes, we see how mental illness can both tear families apart and reaffirm the bonds of love. Poignant yet playful, The Parakeet follows Bastien's struggle to accept the mother he has while wishing for the mother he needs.

There are now signs that, after decades of phenomenal growth, the era of unrestrained gambling liberalisation may be coming to an end. However, the power of the Gambling Establishment is formidable, and it will certainly fight back. Drawing on research and policy examples from around the world, the book provides a unified understanding of the dangerousness of modern commercialised gambling, how its expansion has been deliberately or inadvertently supported, and how the backlash is now occurring. The term Gambling Establishment is defined to include the industry which sells gambling, governments which support it, and a wider network of organisations and individuals who have subscribed to the 'responsible gambling' Establishment discourse. Topics covered include the psychology of how gambling is now being advertised and promoted and the way it is designed to deceive gamblers about their chances of winning; the increased exposure of young people to gambling and the alignment of gambling with sport; understanding the experience of gambling addiction; the various public health harms of gambling at individual, family, community and societal levels; and how evidence has been used to resist change. The book's final chapter offers the author's manifesto for policy change, designed with Britain particularly in mind but likely to have relevance elsewhere. With detailed examples given of the ways a number of countries are responding to these threats to their citizens' health, this book will be of global interest for academics, researchers, policymakers and service providers in the field of gambling or other addictions specifically, and public health and social policy generally.

According to researchers, the vast majority--a whopping 75-98 percent--of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life. What we think about truly affects us both physically and emotionally. In fact, fear alone triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses in our bodies, activating more than thirty different hormones! Today our culture is undergoing an epidemic of toxic thoughts that, left unchecked, create ideal conditions for illnesses. In Switch On Your Brain, Dr. Caroline Leaf gave readers a prescription for better health and wholeness through correct thinking patterns. Now she helps readers live out their happier, healthier, more enjoyable lives every day with this devotional companion to her bestselling book. Readers will find here encouragement and strategies to reap the benefits of a detoxed thought life--every day!

For more than half a century, The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) has produced position statements on relevant and controversial psychiatric topics. This latest monograph", ""Homosexuality and the Mental Health Professions: The Impact of Bias, "continues a tradition of timely publications dealing with specific aspects of bias, discrimination, and human sexuality"."

This monograph acutely identifies problems of bias, overt and covert, as they affect the treatment of lesbian and gay patients and as they influence the training of mental health professionals. Incorporating clinical vignettes that detail actual incidents from a wide range of clinical and professional encounters, the report enables the clinician not only to review his or her own experience, but also to envision alternative possibilities of constructive and caring intervention.

As psychiatry enters a new era of understanding the full range of normal variation in human sexuality, this monograph will serve both as an indispensable teaching tool and as an invaluable touchstone for assessing quality of care with gay and lesbian patients.