Routledge Library Editions Psychiatry

Psychiatry is a medical field concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental health conditions. Routledge Library Editions: Psychiatry (24 Volume set) brings together titles, originally published between 1958 and 1997. The set demonstrates the varied nature of mental health and how we as a society deal with it. Covering a number of areas including child and adolescent psychiatry, alternatives to psychiatry, the history of mental health and psychiatric epidemiology.

Liaison psychiatry, that is, psychiatry with patients with organic disorders or physical symptoms in general hospitals, is a field that grew rapidly in the 1980s. Yet there had been no introductory book to the subject which might have served the needs of trainee psychiatrists, medical students, and general physicians and surgeons, as well as nurses and others, whose patients might be involved. This book, originally published in 1987, aimed to fill this gap in the literature. It begins by examining the scope and organisational issues of liaison psychiatry at the time and its role in psychiatric patients with organic disease, psychosomatic disorders, emotional reactions to physical disease, terminal illness, etc. The bulk of the book then reviews liaison in a range of medical specialities. The book should thus have a wide readership.

In the years prior to publication, primary health care had been gaining in significance as a setting both for research on mental illness in the general population and for the development of new preventive approaches in this field. The growing need for research had received impetus from the escalating costs of hospital-based health care, the re-structuring of health services in a number of countries, with an increased emphasis on community care and prevention, and the World Health Organization's 'Health for All' campaign, in response to which a growing number of national planning documents had been published. These developments had already stimulated a new interest in the scope for epidemiological and evaluative investigations based on general medical practice. This book, originally published in 1992, consists of selected contributions to the first international scientific meeting on this topic, held in Toronto in 1989. It is made up of five sections, dealing respectively with: the growth and development of a new research field; findings of psychiatric surveys in general practice in a number of different countries; specialist and generalist medical care for mental illness - issues of selection and referral; and specialist aspects of late-life mental disorders encountered in such research. The inclusion of reports from groups of workers in the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Finland, Canada, Australia and other countries testifies to the rapid spread of interest in these questions. With the exception of the first two chapters, which sketch the background of public-health and general-practice epidemiology, all the contributions are focused on general practice as a field laboratory for study of the occurrence, distribution, diagnostic composition and risk factors of psychiatric illness in unselected populations, and present data, largely unpublished, from the authors' own projects. These findings confirm the importance of research in general practice as a major growing-point of social psychiatry and provide guidelines for further progress in the years ahead. This book will still be an invaluable source of reference to all psychiatrists, psychologists, general practitioners and health care professionals concerned with mental disorders in the wider community.

Originally published in 1985, this book focuses on British psychiatric policies, particularly in the 1920s, and 1950s when the main legislation concerning mental illness was passed. It approaches policy primarily as the outcome of the relationship between politicians’ attitudes and those of professional groups in a specific social context. It examines the beliefs and theories of psychiatrists, nurses, psychologists and social workers, as well as the attitudes of government and MPs to mental illness, related services and its role in society. It is argued that the adherence to a medical-somatic view of mental illness by psychiatrists and politicians alike has led to the exclusion of viable alternatives, despite lip service being paid to some of them. It is shown that the issues of recent decades have important messages today, particularly in view of the 1982 amendments to the Mental Health Act and the debate about community services.

Psychiatry is a medical field concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental health conditions. Routledge Library Editions: Psychiatry (24 Volume set) brings together titles, originally published between 1958 and 1997. The set demonstrates the varied nature of mental health and how we as a society deal with it. Covering a number of areas including child and adolescent psychiatry, alternatives to psychiatry, the history of mental health and psychiatric epidemiology.

In the 1980s, transcultural psychiatry was a developing field which was commanding increasing attention for three major reasons. First, many societies were becoming more and more multicultural, and therefore professional health workers needed to be aware of the needs and background of ethnic groups, as well as to be familiar with their own cultural assumptions. Secondly, the study of psychiatric illness across cultures can illuminate features of such an illness in our own society. Thirdly, the way in which racism may initiate or sustain psychiatric disorder had become a topic essential to a present-day understanding of transcultural psychiatry. Originally published in 1986, this book provides a review of many such aspects of transcultural psychiatry. It is written at a level suitable for mental health professionals, including trainee psychiatrists, but would also interest students and other qualified staff, including psychologists, nurses, social workers and other professional workers concerned with race relations and the provision of psychiatric services for ethnic groups.

Originally published in 1987, this title was compiled in response to the concern, in some segments of society, about the presence of new religious movements in the West in the second half of the twentieth century. There are lots of psychological questions surrounding cults and the influence they have over their members. These questions have been operative in the accumulation of this annotated bibliography, which was intended primarily as a reference guide for psychiatrists and counsellors who advise cult members, ex-cult members and their bewildered parents, and lawyers who use psychiatric arguments in the courts.