Can you remember one day in your life-or perhaps just one hour-when you were content and unworried? For most of us, that’s hard to do, and many rely on powerful mood-altering drugs to just get us through the day.If you’ve been searching for natural alternatives, NATURE’S PROZAC is your definitive guide to achieving peak mental and emotional health with nature’s medicines.”More than anything in the field of mental health, we need lots of creative alternatives to drugs. Judith Sachs’ book makes a major contribution in this direction.”~Peter R. Breggin, M.D., author, Talking Back to Prozac and Toxic Psychiatry

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Summarizing mental health research conducted by sociologists over the last 30 years, A Sociology of Mental Illness provides a consistent narrative that emphasizes how social statuses and social roles affect mental health. The mental health treatment system and the public’s reaction to mental illness are also comprehensively discussed. Topics include social causes and consequences of mental illness; social statuses, such as gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, age, and community; deviant behavior; and the challenges of community mental health. For those in the fields of sociology, psychology, nursing, and social workers.

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This timely volume analyzes the growing burden of mental, behavioral and social problems in low-income countries, examines the sources of the substantial morbidity rates and their relation to development, and assesses current efforts to cope with them. It identifies opportunities for effective mental health interventions, methods of treatment, culturally appropriate prevention programs, and sound policy formation. It relates the mental health consequences of violence, dislocation, poverty, and the disenfranchisement of women to the most pressing economic, political, and environmental problems of our time.

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This title is directed primarily towards health care professionals outside of the United States. It provides a comprehensive outline of the essentials of work in community mental health care. Written in an accessible and engaging style, it provides an indespensible blueprint for the profession in the twenty first century. It summarises the history of community care; its why, when, what and who; the skills required to work with psychiatric patients; the practical ‘rules of the game’ in terms of the care programme approach, the mental health act and treatments (psychological, social and physical, including medications). This provocative and ground-breaking book will encourage debate and challenge community mental health workers to provide a modern and practical approach to the holistic care of the patient.

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Vega and Murphy examine treatment, organizational planning, and research issues and offer a critique of the theoretical and programmatic aspects of providing mental health services to traditionally underserved populations. Focusing on minority groups, the book uses the case of Hispanics to illustrate the largely-unaddressed need for services that are relevant to groups with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This discussion of the requirements for a socially responsible and community-based services delivery program lays the theoretical foundation for a future mental health system.

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The Health Psychology Reader is designed to complement and support the recent textbook Health Psychology: Theory, Research and Practice by David F Marks, Michael Murray, Brian Evans and Carla Willig (Sage, 2000). It can also be used as a stand-alone resource given its didactic nature. The Reader explores key topics within the health psychology field with incisive introductions to each section by the Editor and includes a selection of the most important theoretical and empirical published work.

The author has visited psychiatric hospitals in China since 1983, and was appointed advisor to the Ministry of Civil Affairs National Training Centre for Mental Health Workers in 1991. She presents an informed and personal account of psychiatric care in China, detailing historical and current attitudes to mental illness in this vast and diverse country.

Also available:

Mental Health and Primary Care: A Changing Agenda – ISBN 0902241532
Seminars in Child and Adolescent Psychiatrys, 2nd Edition – ISBN 1904671136

RCPsych Publications is the publishing arm of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (based in London, United Kingdom), which has been promoting excellence in mental health care since 1841. Produced by the same editorial team who publish The British Journal of Psychiatry, they sell books for both psychiatrists and other mental health professionals; and also many written for the general public. Their popular series include the College Seminars Series, the NICE mental health guidelines and the Books Beyond Words series for people with intellectual disabilities.

RCPsych publishes in all areas of psychiatry and mental health, including but not limited to:
Clinical psychiatric practice
Intellectual disability
Mental health services for children, adolescents, adults and the elderly
Psychopharmacology
Psychotherapy
Rehabilitation psychiatry
Family mental health
Service provision

RCPsych Publications books can help with the following disorders:
Addictions
Affective disorders
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Bereavement
Borderline personality disorder
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
Dementia
Depression
Eating disorders
Perinatal psychiatric disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Psychosis
Schizophrenia
Sleep problems

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In this vivid and thoughtful study, David Karp chronicles the experiences of the family members of the mentally ill, and how they draw “boundaries of sympathy” to avoid being engulfed by the day-to-day suffering of a loved one. Working from sixty extensive interviews, the author reveals striking similarities in the experiences of caregivers: the feelings of shame, fear, guilt and powerlessness in the face of a socially stigmatized illness; the frustration of navigating the complex network of bureaucracies that govern the mental health system; and most of all, the difficulty negotiating an “appropriate” level of involvement with the mentally ill loved one while maintaining enough distance for personal health. Throughout, Karp sensitively explores the overarching question of how people strike equilibrium between reason and emotion, between head and heart, when caring for a catastrophically ill person. The book concludes with a critical look at what it means to be a moral and caring person at the turn of the century in America, when powerful cultural messages spell out two contradictory imperatives: pursue personal fulfillment at any cost and care for the family at any cost. An insightful, deeply caring look at mental illness and at the larger picture of contemporary values, The Burden of Sympathy is required reading for caregivers of all kinds, and for anyone seeking broader understanding of human responsibility in the postmodern world.

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Many critics attack federal judges as anti-democratic elitists, activists out of step with the mainstream of American thought. But others argue that judges should stand alone as the ultimate guardians of American values, placing principle before the views of the people.
In The Most Democratic Branch, Jeffrey Rosen disagrees with both assertions. Contrary to what interest groups may claim, he contends that, from the days of John Marshall right up to the present, the federal courts by and large have reflected the opinions of the mainstream. More important, he argues that the Supreme Court is most successful when it defers to the constitutional views of the American people, as represented most notably by Congress and the Presidency. And on the rare occasion when they departed from the consensus, the result has often been a disaster.
To illustrate, Rosen provides a penetrating look at some of the most important Supreme Court cases in American history–cases involving racial equality, affirmative action, abortion, gay rights and gay marriage, the right to die, electoral disputes, and civil liberties in wartime. Rosen shows that the most notorious constitutional decisions in American history–the ones that have been most strenuously criticized, such as Dred Scott or Roe v. Wade–have gone against mainstream opinion. By contrast, the most successful decisions–from Marbury v. Madison to Brown v. Board of Education–have avoided imposing constitutional principles over the wishes of the people. Rosen concludes that the judiciary works best when it identifies the constitutional principles accepted by a majority of Americans, and enforces them unequivocally as fundamental law.
Jeffrey Rosen is one of the most respected legal experts writing today, a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and the Legal Affairs Editor of The New Republic. The provocative arguments that he puts forth here are bound to fuel heated debate at a time when the federal judiciary is already the focus of fierce criticism.

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