An Ethnographic Study of Mental Health Treatment and Outcomes

An Ethnographic Study of Mental Health Treatment and Outcomes
Author: Fran Babiss
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2002
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780789021861

Selected for inclusion in Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences, 2005 edition (DCT), this book documents the treatment history of three women suffering from affective and personality disorders. The book guides you through the process of conducting qualitative/ethnographic research, providing examples of data collection techniques, analysis, and interpretation. Interviews and observations provide you with a glimpse into the world of mental health treatment from each woman's perspective and offer suggestions on interventions and group activities designed to improve treatment outcomes.

Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy

Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy
Author: Anthony J. Marsella
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9401092206

Within the past two decades, there has been an increased interest in the study of culture and mental health relationships. This interest has extended across many academic and professional disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, public health and social work, and has resulted in many books and scientific papers emphasizing the role of sociocultural factors in the etiology, epidemiology, manifestation and treatment of mental disorders. It is now evident that sociocultural variables are inextricably linked to all aspects of both normal and abnormal human behavior. But, in spite of the massive accumulation of data regarding culture and mental health relationships, sociocultural factors have still not been incorporated into existing biological and psychological perspectives on mental disorder and therapy. Psychiatry, the Western medical specialty concerned with mental disorders, has for the most part continued to ignore socio-cultural factors in its theoretical and applied approaches to the problem. The major reason for this is psychiatry's continued commitment to a disease conception of mental disorder which assumes that mental disorders are largely biologically-caused illnesses which are universally represented in etiology and manifestation. Within this perspective, mental disorders are regarded as caused by universal processes which lead to discrete and recognizable symptoms regardless of the culture in which they occur. However, this perspective is now the subject of growing criticism and debate.

Recovery's Edge

Recovery's Edge
Author: Neely Laurenzo Myers
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2015-12-18
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0826520812

In 2003 the Bush Administration's New Freedom Commission asked mental health service providers to begin promoting "recovery" rather than churning out long-term, "chronic" mental health service users. Recovery's Edge sends us to urban America to view the inner workings of a mental health clinic run, in part, by people who are themselves "in recovery" from mental illness. In this provocative narrative, Neely Myers sweeps us up in her own journey through three years of ethnographic research at this unusual site, providing a nuanced account of different approaches to mental health care. Recovery's Edge critically examines the high bar we set for people in recovery through intimate stories of people struggling to find meaningful work, satisfying relationships, and independent living. This book is a recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.

Mental Health Self-Help

Mental Health Self-Help
Author: Louis D. Brown
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2010-08-05
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1441962530

Building on earlier patient-empowerment movements, consumer- and advocate-driven mental health self-help (MHSH) initiatives currently outnumber traditional mental health organizations. At the same time, this apparent success raises significant questions about their short-term efficacy and their value to lasting recovery. Mental Health Self-Help assembles the state of the evidence on the effectiveness of MHSH, beginning with the individual and larger social factors behind the expansion of consumer-directed services. Clearly organized and accessibly written, the book traces the development and evolution of MHSH as both alternative and adjunct to traditional mental health structures, offers research-based perspectives on the various forms of MHSH, and identifies potential areas for consumer initiatives to work with—and help improve—mental health systems. Contributors weigh strengths and limitations, raise research and methodology questions, and discuss funding and training issues to give readers a deeper understanding of the field and an informed look at its future impact on mental health treatment. Individual chapters cover the spectrum of contemporary self-help initiatives in mental health, including: • Online mutual aid groups. • Consumer-run drop-in centers. • Family and caregiver groups. • Certified peer support specialists. • Consumer advocacy initiatives. • Technical assistance organizations. • Professional/self-help collaborations. Mental Health Self-Help is a bedrock guide to an increasingly influential aspect of the mental health landscape. Researchers studying these initiatives from a variety of fields including community and clinical psychology, and public health—as well as clinicians, counselors, social workers, case managers, and policymakers—will find it an indispensable reference.

A Disability of the Soul

A Disability of the Soul
Author: Karen Nakamura
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2013-06-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0801467985

"This is a terrific book―moving, clear, and compassionate. It not only illustrates the way psychiatric illness is shaped by culture, but also suggests that social environments can be used to improve the course and outcome of the illness. Well worth reading." — T. M. Luhrmann, author of Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist looks at American Psychiatry Bethel House, located in a small fishing village in northern Japan, was founded in 1984 as an intentional community for people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Using a unique, community approach to psychosocial recovery, Bethel House focuses as much on social integration as on therapeutic work. As a centerpiece of this approach, Bethel House started its own businesses in order to create employment and socialization opportunities for its residents and to change public attitudes toward the mentally ill, but also quite unintentionally provided a significant boost to the distressed local economy. Through its work programs, communal living, and close relationship between hospital and town, Bethel has been remarkably successful in carefully reintegrating its members into Japanese society. It has become known as a model alternative to long-term institutionalization. In A Disability of the Soul, Karen Nakamura explores how the members of this unique community struggle with their lives, their illnesses, and the meaning of community. Told through engaging historical narrative, insightful ethnographic vignettes, and compelling life stories, her account of Bethel House depicts its achievements and setbacks, its promises and limitations. A Disability of the Soul is a sensitive and multidimensional portrait of what it means to live with mental illness in contemporary Japan.

Transforming Therapy

Transforming Therapy
Author: Whitney L. Duncan
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-07-24
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0826521991

Oaxaca is known for many things—its indigenous groups, archaeological sites, crafts, and textiles—but not for mental health care. When one talks with Oaxacans about mental health, most say it's a taboo topic and that people there think you "have to be crazy to go to a psychologist." Yet throughout Oaxaca are signs advertising the services of psicólogos; there are prominent conferences of mental health professionals; and self-help groups like Neurotics Anonymous thrive, where participants rise to say, "Hola, mi nombre es Raquel, y soy neurótica." How does one explain the recent growth of Euroamerican-style therapies in the region? Author Whitney L. Duncan analyzes this phenomenon of "psy-globalization" and develops a rich ethnography of its effects on Oaxacans' understandings of themselves and their emotions, ultimately showing how globalizing forms of care are transformative for and transformed by the local context. She also delves into the mental health impacts of migration from Mexico to the United States, both for migrants who return and for the family members they leave behind. This book is a recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.

Collaborative and Indigenous Mental Health Therapy

Collaborative and Indigenous Mental Health Therapy
Author: Wiremu NiaNia
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1315386410

This book examines a collaboration between traditional Māori healing and clinical psychiatry. Comprised of transcribed interviews and detailed meditations on practice, it demonstrates how bicultural partnership frameworks can augment mental health treatment by balancing local imperatives with sound and careful psychiatric care. In the first chapter, Māori healer Wiremu NiaNia outlines the key concepts that underpin his worldview and work. He then discusses the social, historical, and cultural context of his relationship with Allister Bush, a child and adolescent psychiatrist. The main body of the book comprises chapters that each recount the story of one young person and their family’s experience of Māori healing from three or more points of view: those of the psychiatrist, the Māori healer and the young person and other family members who participated in and experienced the healing. With a foreword by Sir Mason Durie, this book is essential reading for psychologists, social workers, nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, and students interested in bicultural studies.

Extraordinary Conditions

Extraordinary Conditions
Author: Janis H. Jenkins
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520287118

With a fine-tuned ethnographic sensibility, Janis H. Jenkins explores the lived experience of psychosis, trauma, and depression among people of diverse cultural orientations, revealing how mental illness engages fundamental human processes of self, desire, gender, identity, attachment, and interpretation. Extraordinary Conditions illuminates the cultural shaping of extreme psychological suffering and the social rendering of the mentally ill as nonhuman or not fully human. Jenkins contends that mental illness is better characterized in terms of struggle than symptoms and that culture is central to all aspects of mental illness from onset to recovery. Her analysis refashions the boundaries between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the routine and the extreme, and the healthy and the pathological. This book asserts that the study of mental illness is indispensable to the anthropological understanding of culture and experience, and reciprocally that understanding culture and experience is critical to the study of mental illness.

Pragmatic Healthcare Ethnography

Pragmatic Healthcare Ethnography
Author: Alison B. Hamilton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2024-12-09
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 104022637X

This practical and accessible textbook provides an overview of the key principles for conducting ethnography in healthcare settings. Shedding new light on healthcare delivery and experiences, ethnographic research methods provide a useful set of tools for observing how people act in the world and help us understand why people act as they do. Increasingly recognized for their explanatory power, especially around behavior and social context, ethnographic methods are an invaluable approach for understanding challenges and processes in healthcare services and delivery. This guide takes the reader step-by-step through the research process, from grant writing and study design to data collection and analysis. Each chapter, illustrated by a range of examples, introduces ethnographic concepts and techniques, considers how to apply them in pragmatic research, and includes suggestions for tips and tricks. An in-depth case study describing real-world ethnographic research in a healthcare setting follows each chapter to demonstrate both the “how to” and the value of ethnographic approaches. The case studies discuss why the researcher used ethnography, the specific approach taken, the setting for the work, and key lessons that demonstrate ethnographic principles covered in the related chapter. This is an essential text for researchers from a range of health-related backgrounds new to ethnographic methods, including students taking courses on qualitative research methods in health, implementation science, and applied anthropology.