By 2050, the number of people aged sixty years and older with schizophrenia is expected to double and affect about 10 million people worldwide. Psychoses are among the most common experiences in later life, with a lifetime risk of 23 percent. As a result, there is a looming crisis in mental health care. Schizophrenia and Psychoses in Later Life is the first major multidisciplinary reference on these important disorders. The book provides guidelines for clinical care, research and policy that are consistent with the emerging paradigmatic changes occurring with respect to schizophrenia in later life. This book features multidisciplinary contributions from experts in the fields of biological psychiatry, social psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, social work, psychology, and neuropsychology that will help professionals to integrate services and attain the best outcomes. The text will guide psychiatrists, psychologists, gerontologists, policymakers, and social scientists in creating innovative new programs to help this underserved and growing population.

Psychiatry can help free persons from social, physical and psychological oppression, and it can assist persons to lead free self-directed lives. And, because social realities impact on mental well-being, psychiatry has a critical role to play in social struggles that further liberation. These are the basic foundations of liberatory psychiatry. In recent years, dramatic transformations in social and political structures worldwide have increased the problems of domination, alienation, consumerism, class, gender, religion, race and ethnicity. Confronting the psychological impact of these changes, and exploring new ideas to help develop the liberatory potential of psychiatry, this book should be read by mental health practitioners from the widest range of disciplines and those interested in social theory and political science.