Mental Health and Social Problems is a textbook for social work students and practitioners. It explores the complicated relationship between mental conditions and societal issues as well as examining risk and protective factors for the prevalence, course, adaptation to and recovery from mental illness. The introductory chapter presents bio-psycho-social and life-modeled approaches to helping individuals and families with mental illness. The book is divided into two parts. Part I addresses specific social problems, such as poverty, oppression, racism, war, violence, and homelessness, identifying the factors which contribute to vulnerabilities and risks for the development of mental health problems, including the barriers to accessing quality services. Part II presents the most current empirical findings and practice knowledge about prevalence, diagnosis, assessment, and intervention options for a range of common mental health problems - including personality conditions, eating conditions and affective conditions. Focusing throughout upon mental health issues for children, adolescents, adults and older adults, each chapter includes case studies and web resources. This practical book is ideal for social work students who specialize in mental health.

This book, written by clinicians who practice primarily from a psychodynamic framework, shows how to include cognitive-behavioral techniques in contemporary psychodynamic practice. In Part I, the authors examine why integration is essential and present a model for cognitive assessment within an ego psychological framework. Are these two approaches compatible or even complementary? What can one offer the other? Does one work better with a specific population or problem than the other? Can cognitive clinicians learn something from the psychodynamic understanding of the roles of affect, transference, and developmental history? Can psycho-dynamically trained clinicians learn something from cognitive understanding of the role of thought processes in influencing behavior and creating change? Part II illustrates this integration in clinical work with children, adolescents, older adults, and couples. Its utility and effectiveness in practice is further highlighted in brief treatment sessions and in treating problems of depression, trauma, and chemical dependence.

Mental Health and Social Problems is a textbook for social work students and practitioners. It explores the complicated relationship between mental conditions and societal issues as well as examining risk and protective factors for the prevalence, course, adaptation to and recovery from mental illness. The introductory chapter presents bio-psycho-social and life-modeled approaches to helping individuals and families with mental illness. The book is divided into two parts. Part I addresses specific social problems, such as poverty, oppression, racism, war, violence, and homelessness, identifying the factors which contribute to vulnerabilities and risks for the development of mental health problems, including the barriers to accessing quality services. Part II presents the most current empirical findings and practice knowledge about prevalence, diagnosis, assessment, and intervention options for a range of common mental health problems - including personality conditions, eating conditions and affective conditions. Focusing throughout upon mental health issues for children, adolescents, adults and older adults, each chapter includes case studies and web resources. This practical book is ideal for social work students who specialize in mental health.

Modern society is increasingly preoccupied with fears for the future and the idea of preventing 'the worst'. The result is a focus on attempting to calculate the probabilities of adverse events occurring - in other words, on measuring risk. Since the 1990s, the idea of risk has come to dominate policy and practice in mental health across the USA, Australasia and Europe. In this timely new text, a group of international experts examines the ways in which the narrow focus on specific kinds of risk, such as violence towards others, perpetuates the social disadvantages experienced by mental health service users whilst, at the same time, ignoring the vast array of risks experienced by the service users themselves. Benefitting from the authors' extensive practice experience, the book considers how the dominance of the risk paradigm generates dilemmas for mental health organizations, as well as within leadership and direct practice roles, and offers practical resolutions to these dilemmas that both satisfy professional ethics and improve the experience of the service user. Combining examination of key theories and concepts with insights from front line practice, this latest addition to Palgrave's Beyond the Risk Paradigm series provides an important new dimension to debates on mental health provision.