Psychoanalysis, the NHS, and Mental Health Work Today

Psychoanalysis, the NHS, and Mental Health Work Today
Author: Alison Vaspe
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429903650

This book illustrates the distinctive psychoanalytic contribution to mental health services for children, young people, and adults, with detailed case vignettes illustrating therapeutic treatment and the ways in which staff are supported to do work that is frequently difficult and disturbing. Psychoanalytic thinking contributes to effective mental health work on many levels, from Balint's "Flash" technique in the brief GP/patient encounter to the psychiatric medical and nursing care in secure units, where the most challenging patients need to be held. Starting with the historical contribution of psychoanalysis to the NHS in the 1940s, this book goes on to explore two key psychoanalytic concepts that remain highly relevant to the work of mental health: containment and countertransference. The authors include psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, organisational consultants, consultant psychiatrists, and a leading practitioner in the field of primary care.

The Work of Psychoanalysts in the Public Health Sector

The Work of Psychoanalysts in the Public Health Sector
Author: Mary Brownescombe Heller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317723341

This book provides a comprehensive insight into the ways in which psychoanalysts think and work. Mary Brownescombe Heller and Sheena Pollet bring together internationally known contributors trained at the Institute of Psychoanalysis to explore the broad range of clinical work, thinking, and teaching undertaken with children, families, adults and staff by psychoanalysts in the UK public health sector. Divided into four sections, The Work of Psychoanalysts in the Public Health Sector covers: clinical work with parents and young children clinical work with adults and their families analytic thinking in health service practice analytic support for health service staff. Experienced psychoanalysts discuss work with various client groups including parents with babies, children, adolescents who self harm, and adults with serious mental health conditions and psychosis. The book also explores how psychoanalytically-informed work can be used alongside other treatment methods, and how health service staff can best be trained and supported. The Work of Psychoanalysts in the Public Health Sector offers the reader a broad perspective and a clear understanding of the various analytical concepts used in clinical practice. It will be invaluable reading for anyone interested in, or already using psychoanalytic ideas and techniques in the health sector, as well as students in training.

Psychoanalytic Thinking in Mental Health Settings

Psychoanalytic Thinking in Mental Health Settings
Author: Marcus Evans
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2020-11-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000206939

This book demonstrates the use of psychoanalytic thinking in front-line mental health settings and aims to make an approach to working with emotional and mental disturbance available to a wide range of clinicians within psychiatric and other mental health settings. Rooted in the author’s extensive clinical experiences, the approach explored in this book applies psychoanalytic thinking and discusses this in relation to the mental health conditions regularly encountered in psychiatric settings, such as Schizophrenia, Manic Depression, Psychotic Depression, Anorexia, Deliberate Self Harm, and Personality Disorder. The book therefore provides valuable and practical ways of working with these difficult, complex, and problematic conditions. It further makes sense of the relationships and emotions encountered when working in these settings and introduces possibilities for more effective and rewarding ways of working, including a model of support through supervision, reflective practice, and clinical discussion. Illustrated by clinical examples from more than four decades of experience in the field, this book is ideal for the interested mental health practitioner.

Practical Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model of Mental Illness

Practical Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model of Mental Illness
Author: Arnoldo Cantú
Publisher: Ethics International Press
Total Pages: 494
Release: 24-02-09
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1804412872

Practical Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model of Mental Illness is the fifth Volume of the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series. Understanding the current systems of psychology and psychiatry is profoundly important. So is exploring alternatives. The Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series presents solicited chapters from international experts on a wide variety of underexplored subjects. This is a series for mental health researchers, teachers, and practitioners, for parents and interested lay readers, and for anyone trying to make sense of anxiety, depression, and other emotional difficulties. Practical Alternatives provides practical and implementable alternatives to psychiatric diagnosing. These discussions will be set against the unique backdrop that is managed care, and the contemporary system of healthcare in the United States. It likewise looks at worldwide practices that have arisen in different cultures and as a result of various alternative frameworks. The aim of this book is to provide people, including medical and psychiatric professionals researchers and students, with practical and varied clinical approaches they can utilize, that sidestep the need to rely on psychiatric diagnoses.

Psycho-social Explorations of Trauma, Exclusion and Violence

Psycho-social Explorations of Trauma, Exclusion and Violence
Author: Christopher Scanlon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2022-01-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000536246

The central theme of this book is the operation of intersecting discourses of power, privilege and positioning as they are revealed in fraught encounters between in-groups and out-groups in our deeply fractured world. The authors offer a unique perspective on inter-group dynamics and structural violence at local, societal, cultural and global levels, dissecting processes of toxic ‘othering’ and psychosocial (re-)traumatisation. The book offers the Diogenes Paradigm as a unique conceptual tool with which to analyse the ways in which those of us who come to be located outside or on the margins of dominant social structures are, in one way or another, the inheritors of the legacies of centuries of oppression and exclusion. This analysis offers a distinctive psycho-social redefinition of trauma that foregrounds the relationship between the inhospitable environments we generate and the experiences of un-housedness that we thereby perpetuate. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Psycho-social Explorations of Trauma, Exclusion and Violence directly addresses pressing global issues of racial trauma, human mobility and climate disaster, and offers a manifesto for the creative re-imagining of the places and spaces in which conversations about restructuring and reparation can become sustainable. This is an essential and compelling book for anyone committed to social justice, especially for all practitioners working in health, social care and community justice settings, and researchers and academics across the behavioural and social sciences.

Psychoanalytic Thinking on the Unhoused Mind

Psychoanalytic Thinking on the Unhoused Mind
Author: Gabrielle Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2019-02-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429620780

Psychoanalytic Thinking on the Unhoused Mind illuminates the psychological underpinnings of current societal problems: homelessness, mental distress, loneliness and states of societal breakdown and exclusion. Illustrated with a broad range of clinical work as well as thoughts on art and literature, the book brings to life complex tensions between the individual psyche, the group, and wider political and cultural structures. ‘Unhoused’ states of mind are explored in rough sleepers, ex-prisoners, survivors of institutional abuse and family trauma, and people living with personality disorder, addiction, psychosis and dementia. Chapters describe outreach, assessment and long-term psychotherapy, as well as reflective practice with staff teams and care systems, and learning from consultation, supervision and policy development. New therapeutic responses to chronic risk and to resilience are developed from psychoanalytic understandings of difficulties with containment and care. The collection will be of value to psychotherapists and other mental health practitioners, as well as those working in therapeutic, residential and criminal justice settings and outreach services.

Off the Couch

Off the Couch
Author: Alessandra Lemma
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2010-04-05
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1136998799

Alessandra Lemma - Winner of the Levy-Goldfarb Award for Child Psychoanalysis! The contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis is being increasingly questioned; Off the Couch challenges this view, demonstrating that psychoanalytic thinking and its applications are both innovative and relevant, in particular to the management and treatment of more disturbed and difficult to engage patient groups. Chapters address: clinical applications in diverse settings across the age range the relevance of psychoanalytic thinking to the practice of CBT, psychosomatics and general psychiatry the contribution of psychoanalytic thinking to mental health policy and the politics of conflict and mediation. This book suggests that psychoanalysis has a vital position within the public health sector and discusses how it can be better utilised in the treatment of a range of mental health problems. It also highlights the role of empirical research in providing a robust evidence base. Off the Couch will be essential reading for those practicing in the field of mental health and will also be useful for anyone involved in the development of mental health and public policies. It will ensure that practitioners and supervisors have a clear insight into how psychoanalysis can be applied in general healthcare.

The Art and Science of Working Together

The Art and Science of Working Together
Author: Christine Thornton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429594291

The Art and Science of Working Together: Practising Group Analysis in Teams and Organizations is a primary resource for anyone wishing to learn more about the complex unconscious dynamics of organizations, providing a practical guide for organizational work, a guide to how to improve things, and a strong theoretical foundation in the group analytic concept of the ‘tripartite matrix’. Group analysis is a highly developed science of group relationships, which allows complexity and systems perspectives to be held in mind alongside organizational psychology, strategic development and business wisdom. Organized into eight sections, the book describes the essence of organizational group analysis, including the art of conversation, leadership, ethical issues in team working, and working with whole organizations. It addresses issues such as ‘us-and-them’ dynamics, the nature of systems boundaries, and the relationship between an organization and its context. Leaders and leading consultants give case studies, describing their thinking as they work, to illustrate the theory in action. This essential new resource will allow clinically trained practitioners to extend their scope into organizational work, and all coaches and leaders to benefit from knowledge of the group analytic discipline. It is essential reading for consultants and coaches working with teams and organizations, and for leaders within organizations.

On Adolescence

On Adolescence
Author: Margot Waddell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429794088

Adolescence and adolescent states of mind have seldom captured so much attention publicly, nor have they stirred so much anxiety and disturbance privately. This long acknowledged, problematic, transitional world between childhood and adulthood is especially fraught, these days, with the assaults and pressures of contemporary culture and modern technology. The heart of the book lies in the exploration of the inner lives of these young people, whether or not they find their way to clinical services. It sets out to illuminate the sorts of things that go wrong, and how we can help to address them – the crises of identity, gender, loss, self-harm, bullying, depression, anger, suicidal impulses, anxiety, and so much more. On Adolescence: Inside Stories is intended for all those concerned with adolescence, and adolescent states of mind at whatever age or stage.