Beyond Madness: Psychosocial Interventions in Psychosis (Community, Culture and Change) - Softcover

Joseph H. Berke, Margaret Fagan, George Mak-Pearce And Stella Pierides-Müller

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853028894 ISBN 13: 9781853028892

Publisher: Jessica Kingsley, 2001

Synopsis

A major question facing psychiatrists is how to treat psychosis effectively while maintaining patients' dignity, self respect and, as far as possible, their psychological and social functioning. The authors of this book have all been associated with the Arbours Crisis Centre in London, a facility where therapists and patients, or guests, live together in order to establish a space where extremes of distress can be tolerated, understood and ameliorated. This text discusses team, group and community settings for interventions, and the five stages a guest passes through when at the centre. It examines special provisions for guests who self-harm, describes the experiences of living and working in the centre, and provides specific examples of interventions at the centre. The effect of power and money is explored, with a focus on authority, staff relationships with guests, and cost effectiveness.

About this title

Review:

This is the seventh volume in the therapeutic communities series and a highly informative and reassuring read for anyone interested in psychodynamic applications, or working with individuals with a mental illness. --Therapeutic Communities Journal

Having no first hand experience of working with mental illness from a psychodynamic perspective, I hoped that this book would provide me with an insight in to the therapeutics of mental illness within a community. The book certainly accomplished this and more. In keeping with the "community spirit" I also feel this book would be of interest to those already in the field, both nationally and internationally, as a means of sharing other therapy experiences. --Therapeutic Communities Journal

The book is basically an account of the Arbours Crisis Centre in London in the words of therapists who have lived and worked there. Part of the therapeutic community movement and the antipsychiatry tradition of RD Laing, the centre has long provided an alternative approach to mental health care. Of course the book goes beyond simply documenting the development of the centre to offer a an implicit critique of mainstream psychiatric treatment and an argument "for a humane, useful and cost-effective alternative to traditional, physical, psychiatric treatments". --Mental Health Today

From the Author:

Joseph H. Berke, an individual and family psychoanalytic psychotherapist, lecturer and teacher. He is founder and director of the Arbours Crisis Centre and is the author of many articles and books on psychological, political and religious themes. Margaret Fagan, who qualified as a psychotherapist with the Arbours Association in 1989, works as a team leader at the Arbours Crisis Centre and is a senior psychotherapist at Brookside Young People's Unit, Goodmayes Hospital. George Mak-Pearce studied history and philosophy of science at Indiana University and subsequently trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He worked as a team leader at the Arbours Crisis Centre, and currently works with young adolescents at the Brandon Centre in London. Stella Pierides-Müller, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice, is also a team leader at the Arbours Crisis Centre. She is co-founder and member of the Association of Arbours Psychotherapists' Borderline Workshop and Arts and Psychoanalytic Workshop, and her main area of work involves borderline psychotic conditions.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1853028894
• ISBN 13: 9781853028892
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288