- The authors have direct experience of working in a wide range of statutory and non-statutory mental health, social care, housing and criminal justice agencies. - Will appeal to a broad range of scholars across the behavioural and social sciences. - Critically examines the concept of trauma, very much a hot topic, from a broad, societal standpoint.

- The authors have direct experience of working in a wide range of statutory and non-statutory mental health, social care, housing and criminal justice agencies. - Will appeal to a broad range of scholars across the behavioural and social sciences. - Critically examines the concept of trauma, very much a hot topic, from a broad, societal standpoint.

Working in any area of mental health nursing presents complex issues regarding the nurse-patient relationship. For those working in prolonged clinical contact with offenders, relationships with patients and colleagues can be particularly emotionally intense and sometimes difficult to express. This book attempts to understand and articulate the emotional labour of forensic nursing and explores the challenge of establishing and maintaining therapeutic relationships with offenders. The first book to consider the emotional and relational component of forensic mental health nursing, the chapters cover a number of specialist forensic areas from this psychodynamic perspective, such as women's services, services for people with personality disorders, intensive care, high security psychiatric hospitals, medium secure units and services for adolescent offenders. A chapter on therapeutic communities is also included, along with chapters on challenging relational phenomena such as working with hate and the difficulties of managing difference when working in environments that produce high levels of anxiety. Therapeutic Relationships with Offenders provides essential information for mental health nurses working in the forensic field and will be of interest to any professionals working with challenging populations and people with personality disorders.

This groundbreaking book explores the psychodynamics and socio-politics of the forensic therapeutic milieu, addressing some of the most difficult and complex issues facing practitioners. It sets out a psycho-social framework for understanding the predicament and the needs of those who live in and those who work in forensic mental health settings. It brings to life the thinking of those working on the frontline in an increasingly difficult and hostile environment, and draws together fresh and stimulating approaches to engagement with highly complex individuals who present challenges to traditional models of psychiatric assessment and treatment. Contributors with considerable clinical experience and expertise from a range of disciplines consider the ethical, emotional and intellectual challenges of their work, and describe ways in which genuine containment and change can be achieved despite numerous perceived assaults on therapeutic relationships, and on the therapeutic milieu itself. Combining clinical case studies with organisational perspectives and clear descriptions of theoretical processes, they explore key issues including the challenges of maintaining role-appropriate, 'boundaried' relationships; the tensions between public protection and individual confidentiality; questions of risk and responsibility; duty of care and respect for individual liberty; the challenges posed by inter-professional tensions and rivalries; as well as specific clinical dilemmas. The difficulties they experience in fulfilling specific therapeutic roles in the face of uncertainties about the funding and commissioning of their services are addressed, and the final part of the book outlines some of the ways in which individuals, particular services and whole organisations may protect themselves when under attack. This unique and highly original book is essential reading for all those working, or training to work, in both forensic and non-forensic inpatient therapeutic milieux and for academics and lay readers interested in the societal dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that are replicated and magnified in these settings.