Managing The Madness

The Saskatchewan Mental Hospital at Weyburn has played a significant role in the history of psychiatric services, mental health research, and providing care in the community. Its history provides a window to the changing nature of mental health services over the 20th century. Built in 1921, Saskatchewan Mental Hospital was considered the last asylum in North America and the largest facility of its kind in the British Commonwealth. A decade later the Canadian Committee for Mental Hygiene cited it as one of the worst facilities in the country, largely due to extreme overcrowding. In the 1950s the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital again attracted international attention for engaging in controversial therapeutic interventions, including treatments using LSD. In the 1960s, sweeping healthcare reforms took hold in the province and mental health institutions underwent dramatic changes as they began transferring patients into communities. As the patient and staff population shrunk, the once palatial building fell into disrepair, the asylum’s expansive farmland went out of cultivation, and mental health services folded into a complicated web of social and correctional services. Erika Dyck’s "Managing Madness" examines an institution that housed people we struggle to understand, help, or even try to change.

Psychiatry regularly comes under attack as a way of caring for and controlling the mentally ill. Originally published in 1986, this title explores the history and theory of psychiatry to illuminate current practice at the time, and shows why mental health services had developed in particular ways. The book was invaluable for all those who needed to understand the problems and processes behind current psychiatric practice at the time – sociologists and psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors, social workers, and health service planners and administrators – and will still be of historical interest today.

A clearer, more accurate performance management strategy Over the past two decades, performance measurement has profoundly changed societies, organizations and the way we live and work. We can now access incredible quantities of data, display, review and report complex information in real time, and monitor employees and processes in detail. But have all these investments in collecting, analysing and reporting data helped companies, governments and people perform better? Measurement Madness is an engaging read, full of anecdotes so peculiar you'll hardly believe them. Each one highlights a performance measurement initiative that went wrong, explains why and – most importantly – shows you how to avoid making the same mistake yourself. The dangers of poorly designed performance measurement are numerous, and even the best how-to guides don't explain how to avoid them. Measurement Madness fills in the gap, showing how to ensure you’re measuring the right things, rewarding the behaviours that deserve rewarding, and interpreting results in a way that will improve things rather than complicate them. This book will help you to recognize, correct and even avoid common performance measurement problems, including: Measuring for the sake of measuring Assuming that measurement is an instant fix for performance issues Comparing sets of data that have nothing in common and hoping to learn something Using targets and rewards to promote certain behaviours, and achieving exactly the opposite ones. Reading Measurement Madness will enable you to design a simple, effective performance measurement system, which will have the intended result of creating value in your organization.

While mental illness and mental health care are increasingly recognized and accepted in today’s society, awareness of the most severely mentally ill—as well as those who care for them—is still dominated by stereotypes. Managing Madness in the Community dispels the myth. Readers will see how treatment options often depend on the social status, race, and gender of both clients and carers; how ideas in the field of mental health care—conflicting priorities and approaches—actually affect what happens on the ground; and how, amid the competing demands of clients and families, government agencies, bureaucrats and advocates, the fragmented American mental health system really works—or doesn’t. In the wake of movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Shutter Island, most people picture the severely or chronically mentally ill being treated in cold, remote, and forbidding facilities. But the reality is very different. Today the majority of deeply troubled mental patients get treatment in nonprofit community organizations. And it is to two such organizations in the Midwest that this study looks for answers. Drawing upon a wealth of unique evidence—fifteen months of ethnographic observations, 91 interviews with clients and workers, and a range of documents—Managing Madness in the Community lays bare the sometimes disturbing nature and effects of our overly complex and disconnected mental health system. Kerry Michael Dobransky examines the practical strategies organizations and their clients use to manage the often-conflicting demands of a host of constituencies, laws, and regulations. Bringing to light the challenges confronting patients and staff of the community-based institutions that bear the brunt of caring for the mentally ill, his book provides a useful broad framework that will help researchers and policymakers understand the key forces influencing the mental health services system today.

The New York Times bestseller “A glistening psychological history, faceted largely by the biographies of eight famous leaders . . .” —The Boston Globe “A provocative thesis . . . Ghaemi’s book deserves high marks for original thinking.” —The Washington Post “Provocative, fascinating.” —Salon.com Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.

Parameswaran Iyer, former Secretary to the Government of India, is best known for leading the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship programme, which became the world's largest sanitation revolution. But Iyer is not your typical bureaucrat. With a far-from-usual career combining two distinguished tenures in the government and an eventful stint outside it, he likes to describe himself as an uncommon 'Insider-Outsider-Insider'. In Method in the Madness, he reflects on the unique path he chose - from cracking the IAS to becoming a globe-trotting World Bank technocrat, to playing the role of a coach to his professional tennis-playing children, to finally returning to India and implementing the SBM. Written with humour and wisdom, this is an inspiring read full of key management insights, practical career advice, and valuable life lessons that will resonate with readers across age groups and professions.