The Medicalization of Psychotherapy

The Medicalization of Psychotherapy PDF Author: Sylvia Olney
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739197037
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
The Medicalization of Psychotherapy: Practicing under the Influence is an ethnographic account of the practice of clinical psychology under the reductionist auspices of biomedicine. Using Peircean semiotic analysis focusing in particular on modes in meaning-making, Sylvia Olney proposes that consciousness should be accorded the same conceptual and value status as “nature” and the human body. This would resolve the psyche/soma split as mirrored both within and between the practice disciplines of medicine and psychotherapy, and could also free practitioners and client/patients from the idea of essential helplessness in the face of biology, a notion which happens to contribute to the vested interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Given the advances of neuroscience and psychoneuroimmunology that support the recognition of force-like dimensions of mind and intention, The Medicalization of Psychotherapy helps to restore the practice of psychotherapy to the significant healing art it has actually been: the healing of consciousness.

De-Medicalizing Misery

De-Medicalizing Misery PDF Author: M. Rapley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230342507
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Psychiatry and psychology have constructed a mental health system that does no justice to the problems it claims to understand and creates multiple problems for its users. Yet the myth of biologically-based mental illness defines our present. The book rethinks madness and distress reclaiming them as human, not medical, experiences.

Medicine over Mind

Medicine over Mind PDF Author: Dena T. Smith
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813598680
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
We live in an era in which medicalization—the process of conceptualizing and treating a wide range of human experiences as medical problems in need of medical treatment—of mental health troubles has been settled for several decades. Yet little is known about how this biomedical framework affects practitioners’ experiences. Using interviews with forty-three practitioners in the New York City area, this book offers insight into how the medical model maintains its dominant role in mental health treatment. Smith explores how practitioners grapple with available treatment models, and make sense of a field that has shifted rapidly in just a few decades. This is a book about practitioners working in a medicalized field; for some practitioners this is a straightforward and relatively tension-free existence while for others, who believe in and practice in-depth talk therapy, the biomedical perspective is much more challenging and causes personal and professional strains.

Practicing Under the Influence

Practicing Under the Influence PDF Author: Sylvia Herold Olney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description


The Myth of Mental Illness

The Myth of Mental Illness PDF Author: Thomas S. Szasz
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062104748
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
“The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict.” — New York Times The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays. Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.

Psychotherapy and Medication

Psychotherapy and Medication PDF Author: Fredric N. Busch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113664833X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Book Description
Over the past two decades, the use of medication combined with psychotherapy or psychoanalysis has shifted from an infrequent occurrence to common practice. Concurrently, attitudes toward medication have changed from viewing this intervention as disruptive or as a last resort to a welcome aid in the psychotherapeutic or psychoanalytic process. However, this relatively rapid change has created difficulty in the integration of medication use into the psychotherapeutic setting. Psychotherapy and Medication is an exceptionally valuable and timely volume that provides psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and other mental health professionals with information on how to work with medication theoretically, clinically, and technically in the context of a psychotherapeutic or psychoanalytic treatment. Important areas of discussion include evidence that a change in the use of medication has taken place, an examination of the factors that have led to this shift, as well as a review of the issues and questions about combining treatments. Psychotherapy and Medication also serves as a framework in how to best answer the many questions that have arisen as the willingness of analysts to use medication increases. Such significant questions include: How should analysts introduce patients to medication? What are the clinical advantages of combined treatment? What is the impact of medication discussions and prescribing on the analyst’s role and how is this best handled?

The Medical Model in Mental Health

The Medical Model in Mental Health PDF Author: Ahmed Samei Huda
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192534092
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
Many published books that comment on the medical model have been written by doctors, who assume that readers have the same knowledge of medicine, or by those who have attempted to discredit and attack the medical practice. Both types of book have tended to present diagnostic categories in medicine as universally scientifically valid examples of clear-cut diseases easily distinguished from each other and from health; with a fixed prognosis; and with a well-understood aetiology leading to disease-reversing treatments. These are contrasted with psychiatric diagnoses and treatments, which are described as unclear and inadequate in comparison. The Medical Model in Mental Health: An Explanation and Evaluation explores the overlap between the usefulness of diagnostic constructs (which enable prognosis and treatment decisions) and the therapeutic effectiveness of psychiatry compared with general medicine. The book explains the medical model and how it applies in mental health, assuming little knowledge or experience of medicine, and defends psychiatry as a medical practice.

Refocused Psychotherapy as the First Line Intervention in Behavioral Health

Refocused Psychotherapy as the First Line Intervention in Behavioral Health PDF Author: Nicholas A Cummings
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136259651
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Provides a roadmap for putting psychotherapy back as the first line intervention in mental health Advocates discovering the behavioral causes of anxiety and depression, rather than prescribing medication Psychotropic medications are being seriously challenged in terms of efficacy, and the public is becoming wary of their alarming side effects, which continue to mount Emphasizes behavioral healthcare, grounded in psychopathology Is written with the National Health Reform Act of 2010 in mind, making this book very timely Demonstrates how the psychotherapist should work side-by-side with the physician to provide efficacy, effectiveness, and efficiency without compromising grounding in behavioral health Describes the Biodyne model, an evidence-based, field-tested system

Saving Normal

Saving Normal PDF Author: Allen Frances, M.D.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062229273
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
From "the most powerful psychiatrist in America" (New York Times) and "the man who wrote the book on mental illness" (Wired), a deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. These challenges are a normal part of being human, and they should not be treated as psychiatric disease. However, today millions of people who are really no more than "worried well" are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and are receiving unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of thousands of years, and into the hands of "Big Pharma," who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances cautions that the new edition of the "bible of psychiatry," the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), will turn our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of "normal" people into "mental patients." Alarmingly, in DSM-5, normal grief will become "Major Depressive Disorder"; the forgetting seen in old age is "Mild Neurocognitive Disorder"; temper tantrums are "Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder"; worrying about a medical illness is "Somatic Symptom Disorder"; gluttony is "Binge Eating Disorder"; and most of us will qualify for adult "Attention Deficit Disorder." What's more, all of these newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of the mental health industry: those who desperately need psychiatric help are left shamefully neglected, while the "worried well" are given the bulk of the treatment, often at their own detriment. Masterfully charting the history of psychiatric fads throughout history, Frances argues that whenever we arbitrarily label another aspect of the human condition a "disease," we further chip away at our human adaptability and diversity, dulling the full palette of what is normal and losing something fundamental of ourselves in the process. Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity.

Medicalizing Counselling

Medicalizing Counselling PDF Author: Tom Strong
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319566997
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
This book discusses how counselling, a profession known for diverse and innovative practices, has recently been influenced by scientific, marketplace, and administrative developments corresponding with a medicalized focus on psychiatric diagnoses and related evidence-based treatments. Tensions associated with this medicalized focus refer to competing logics and accountabilities regarding how to understand and address concerns brought to counselling. Tom Strong reviews such tensions as they relate to counsellors’ approaches to practice experienced as incompatible with a medicalized approach. The role of media and technology, therapy culture, and counsellor education, are examined with respect to medicalizing tensions that professionals and clients of counselling increasingly face. The book will interest readers who share concerns regarding the potential for a mental health monoculture grounded in the diagnose and treatment logic of medicalized counselling.