Narrative Psychiatry And Family Collaborations

Narrative Psychiatry and Family Collaborations is about helping families with complex psychiatric problems by seeing and meeting the families and the family members, as the best versions of themselves, before we see and address the diagnoses. This book draws on ten years of clinical research and contains stories about helping people, who are heavily burdened with psychiatric illnesses, to find ways to live a life as close as possible to their dreams. The chapters are organized according to ideas, values, and techniques. The book describes family-oriented practices, narrative collaborative practices, narrative psychiatric practices, and narrative agency practices. It also talks about wonderfulness interviewing, mattering practices, public note taking on paper charts, therapeutic letter writing, diagnoses as externalized problems, narrative medicine, and family community meetings. Each chapter includes case studies that illustrate the theory, ethics, and practice, told by Nina Jørring in collaboration with the families and colleagues. The book will be of interest to child and adolescent psychiatrists and all other mental health professionals working with children and families.

Narrative psychiatry empowers patients to shape their lives through story. Rather than focusing only on finding the source of the problem, in this collaborative clinical approach psychiatrists also help patients diagnose and develop their sources of strength. By encouraging the patient to explore their personal narrative through questioning and story-telling, the clinician helps the patient participate in and discover the ways in which they construct meaning, how they view themselves, what their values are, and who it is exactly that they want to be. These revelations in turn inform clinical decision-making about what it is that ails them, how they'd like to treat it, and what recovery might look like. The Art of Narrative Psychiatry is the first comprehensive description of narrative psychiatry in action. Engaging and accessible, it demonstrates how to help patients cultivate their personal sources of strength and meaning as resources for recovery. Illustrated with vivid case reports and in-depth accounts of therapeutic conversations, the book offers psychiatrists and psychotherapists detailed guidance in the theory and practice of this collaborative approach. Drawing inspiration from narrative therapy, post-modern philosophy, humanistic medicine, and social justice movements - and replete with ways to more fully manifest the intentions of the mental health recovery model - this engaging new book shows how to draw on the standard psychiatric toolbox while also maintaining focus on the patient's vision of the world and illuminating their skills and strengths. Written by a pioneer in the field, The Art of Narrative Psychiatry describes a breadth of nuanced, powerful narrative practices, including externalizing problems, listening for what is absent but implicit, facilitating re-authoring conversations, fostering communities of support, and creating therapeutic documents. The Art of Narrative Psychiatry addresses mental health challenges that range from mild to severe, including anxiety, depression, despair, anorexia/bulimia, perfectionism, OCD, trauma, psychosis, and loss. True to form, the author narrates her own experience throughout, sharing her internal thoughts and decision-making processes as she listens to patients. The Art of Narrative Psychiatry is necessary reading for any professional seeking to empower their patients and become a better, more compassionate clinician.

Psychiatry has lagged behind many clinical specialties in recognizing the importance of narrative for understanding and effectively treating disease. With this book, Bradley Lewis makes the challenging and compelling case that psychiatrists need to promote the significance of narrative in their practice as well. Narrative already holds a prominent place in psychiatry. Patient stories are the foundation for diagnosis and the key to managing treatment and measuring its effectiveness. Even so, psychiatry has paid scant scholarly attention to the intrinsic value of patient stories. Fortunately, the study of narrative outside psychiatry has grown exponentially in recent years, and it is now possible for psychiatry to make considerable advances in its appreciation of clinical stories. Narrative Psychiatry picks up this intellectual opportunity and develops the tools of narrative for psychiatry. Lewis explores the rise of narrative medicine and looks closely at recent narrative approaches to psychotherapy. He uses philosophic and fictional writings, such as Anton Chekhov’s play Ivanov, to develop key terms in narrative theory (plot, metaphor, character, point of view) and to understand the interpretive dimensions of clinical work. Finally, Lewis brings this material back to psychiatric practice, showing how narrative insights can be applied in psychiatric treatments—including the use of psychiatric medications. Nothing short of a call to rework the psychiatric profession, Narrative Psychiatry advocates taking the inherently narrative-centered patient-psychiatrist relationship to its logical conclusion: making the story a central aspect of treatment.

Unravelling Trauma and Weaving Resilience with Systemic and Narrative Therapy is an innovative book that details how clinicians can engage children, families and their networks in creative and collaborative relationships to elicit change within the context of trauma and violence. Combining systemic, narrative and dialogical theoretical frameworks with clinical examples, this volume focuses on therapeutic conversations that can help children, and those involved with them, deconstruct their experienced difficulties, and create more hopeful stories and alternative ways of relating to one another through a sense of play. Vermeire advocates for serious playfulness as a way of directly addressing trauma and its effects, as well as along ‘trauma-sensitive’ side paths. Puppetry, artwork, interviews and theatre play are used to weave networks of resilience in ever-widening circles and this approach is informed by the awareness that individual problems are always to be seen as relational, social and political. This book is an important read for therapists and social workers who work with traumatised children and their multi-stressed families.

Narrative Therapy: Making Meaning, Making Lives offers a comprehensive introduction to the history and theory of narrative therapy. Influenced by feminist, postmodern, and critical theory, this edited volume illustrates how we make sense of our lives and experiences by ascribing meaning through stories that arise within social conversations and culturally available discourses.

This unique title richly tells the stories of partnership and collaboration. The narrative voice of each chapter derives from the people who tell their story -- immigrants, survivors of torture, mental health experts, urban people, rural people, teachers, doctors, attorneys, students and international leaders. These authors provide emotionally powerful tales that move, affect and encourage readers. The collection of narratives is inspired by these individuals, who believe that collaboration can bring authentic mutualism, promise-keeping and innovation to address the hardest problems we face as a world community. Partnerships for Mental Health: Narratives of Community and Academic Collaboration is about the stories of innovation and collaboration occurring between community and academic partners who have undertaken among the very hardest of problems – such as the care of veterans with ravaging posttraumatic stress disorder; the care of homeless individuals with HIV, addiction and mental illness; the care of caregivers for Hispanic family members with Alzheimer’s disease; the prevention of illness in impoverished vulnerable youth; and the rescue of profoundly mentally ill earthquake survivors. In addition, this title not only also tells the story of identity formation of early-career physicians with a calling to work with distinct populations for whom suffering and stigma are immense, but also the stories of the special bonds that develop and are strengthened between community members and academic colleagues and ultimately, between friends. A truly indispensable contribution to the literature, this captivating and novel title illustrates and inspires collaboration in order to bring about better health outcomes for people affected by mental health issues in communities throughout the world.

This text and professional resource offers an alternative approach to thinking about and working with “difficult” families. From a nonpathologizing stance, William C. Madsen demonstrates creative ways to help family members shift their relationship to longstanding problems; envision desired lives; and develop more proactive coping strategies. Anyone working with families in crisis, especially in settings where time and resources are scarce, will gain valuable insights and tools from this book.

Part of the Tavistock Clinic Series, this book focuses on narrative and stories in Family Systems Therapy - particularly on how stories develop within the domain of a therapist's own theoretical, clinical and professional contexts. The aim is to allow the reader to understand the uses of stories in family therapy.This book offers a comprehensive overview of issues related to narrative which appear in a family therapy setting. Originally embarking on a joint project to share clinical experience, members of the Family Systems Group at the Tavistock Clinic discovered that what was common in their work was their emphasis on narrative. This discovery led in time to the development of a shared discourse about their diverse approaches to narrative which are carefully reflected in the contributions in this volume. Part One sets out the context of narrative with contributions on bilingualism and the family's experience of therapy, ending with a thought provoking critique of narrative. Part Two concentrates on applications of these ideas, providing analysis of multiple narratives in illness and loss, gender and language, neonatal care, adoption, divorce and refugee families.