Mental health and well-being : alternatives to the medical model

Includes bibliographical references and index.

From demons to drugs -- Freud and his followers -- Asylums and axe murderers -- Pills and policing -- The interactionist critique -- The anti-psychiatry critique -- The post-structuralist critique -- The flawed science critique -- Madness and meaning -- Selfhood and society -- Roles and responsibility -- Society and spirituality -- Individual responses -- Group responses -- Community-based responses -- Societal responses.

Mental Health and Well-Being provides a sound foundation for understanding alternatives to the medical model of mental health. Students and professionals alike will find an easy to understand overview of critiques of the dominant medical model of mental health and well-being, both longstanding and more recent, and will come away from the book with a more theoretically sound, holistic conception of mental health and well-being. Written by an experienced mental health expert and replete with practical anecdotes, exercises, and examples to help readers apply the book’s material, this book offers an essential foundation for developing more humane mental health practices.