Research holds a key to preventing and effectively treating mental disorders, including ADHD, depression, schizophrenia, and substance abuse. Yet even as research holds out promise, mental health researchers face numerous ethical challenges. Responsible for ensuring participants are able and willing to grant consent, researchers must also constantly protect privacy and confidentiality. But for so many situations, the appropriate decisions are not so clear. An individual with cognitive deficits may have difficulty understanding a research study and granting informed consent, but nevertheless wants to participate. Many studies gather private information about medical records or illegal behaviour that could lead to emotional, social, or legal harm if shared, yet state laws and institutional review boards may require researchers to breach confidentiality in specific situations. Moreover, mental health consumers and other vulnerable research participants are frequently familiar with historical cases of abuse of human subjects, and may be mistrustful of researchers or fear exploitation. At the same time, researchers are often frustrated when they feel that advocates or institutional review boards erect barriers to research, even while failing to enhance the ethical treatment of participants. Ethical research is rarely simply about avoiding bad activities, and more frequently about how to pursue good research when multiple values and commitments conflict. Ethics in Mental Health Research explores how ethical issues arise in mental health research, and offers guidance to researchers who seek to comply with regulations while conducting research that is at once ethical and scientifically credible. Case studies used throughout illustrate a variety of situations and effective problem-solving strategies. This book is essential reading for mental health researchers, IRB members, and research advocates.

The Nature and Tasks of a Personalist Psychology explores the findings and tenets of personalist psychology. This collection of essays offers philosophies of the human person, of science, and of psychological practice. Pursuing a dialogue between philosophers and psychologists, this collection confronts a broad range of issues, including religious ones, which are often held as taboo for psychologists. Section One, Systematic Contributions, contains chapters addressing the issue of whether humans are intrinsically good or bad, tracing the concept of person back to its Trinitarian roots, and arguing that human beings mature as persons only in relation to parents and friends. Section Two, Critical Studies, contains chapters which discuss the superego or authoritarian conscience, explore how the role of theory affects the lives of real human beings, and analyze Alfred Adler's insights into the human condition. The chapters in Section Three, Introduction to Systems, introduce the reader to a number of general characteristics to certain psychological or anthropological theories, allowing the reader to see different ways in which a personalist psychology might become manifest. This volume provides a foundation for personalist psychology. Co-published with the Institute for Personalist Psychology. Contributors: Annemarie Buchholz-Kaiser, William R. Coulson, John F. Crosby, James M. DuBois, Keith A. Houde, Josef Seifert, Philip M. Sutton, Fr. Adrian van Kaam, Paul C. Vitz.