Mental Health and Well-Being

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.

Neil Thompson PhD, DLitt, is an independent writer, educator and adviser with extensive experience in the human services. Formerly a university professor, he now helps individuals and organizations to maximize learning.

Preface. Acknowledgments. About the Author. Introduction I. Constructing Mental Illness 1. From Demons to Drugs 2. Freud and His Followers 3. Asylums and Axe Murderers 4. Pills and Policing II. Deconstructing Mental Illness 5. The Interactionist Critique 6. The Anti-Psychiatry Critique 7. The Post-Structuralist Critique 8. The Flawed Science Critique III. Theorizing Mental Health and Well-being 9. Madness and Meaning 10. Selfhood and Society 11. Roles and Responsibility 12. Society and Spirituality IV. Promoting Mental Health and Well-being 13. Individual Responses 14. Group Responses 15. Community-based Responses 16. Societal Responses. Conclusion. Epilogue. Glossary. Guide to Further Learning. References. Index