Dementia is a devastating disorder which may dramatically interfere with decision-making abilities. Effort has focused on trying to determine when a person is no longer capable of making particular decisions or is globally incompetent. However, much less focus has been placed on understanding how the capacity to make decisions influences one's view of oneself, one's world and one's treatment by others. This book aims to broaden discussion around this issue by moving beyond a focus on notio...

What can psychology offer inclusive education? Traditionally, special education has looked to psychology for many of its theoretical resources and practical strategies. While those seeking to promote more inclusive education have tended to see psychology and psychologists as part of the problem by providing a rationale for segregation. However, in practice many psychologists today are developing inclusive ways of working, and are paying attention to psychological theories that underpin inc...

Since first being identified as a distinct psychiatric disorder in 1943, autism has been steeped in contestation and controversy. Present-day skirmishes over the potential causes of autism, how or even if it should be treated, and the place of Asperger’s syndrome on the autism spectrum are the subjects of intense debate in the research community, in the media, and among those with autism and their families. Bringing together innovative work on autism by international scholars in the social...

This book provides a sociological analysis of major areas of mental health and illness.

For an endeavour that is largely based on conversation it may seem obvious to suggest that psychotherapy is discursive. After all, therapists and clients primarily use talk, or forms of discourse, to accomplish therapeutic aims. However, talk or discourse has usually been seen as secondary to the actual business of therapy - a necessary conduit for exhanging information between therapist and client, but seldom more. Psychotherapy primarily developed by mapping particular experiential domai...

Adulthood is an accessible text which deals with the vital area of adult psychological development. It combines detailed accounts of the main theories and evidence on the psychology of adulthood with thorough discussion and commentary, presented in a concise and friendly form. The book's approach encourages engagement with the main theories of this highly relevant topic, as well as including less well-known models of adulthood for discussion.The book begins with a definiti...

While categorization has always been one of the primary focuses of the social sciences, recent trends within these disciplines have tended to categorize various behaviours as disorders. Researching Resilience challenges this tendency to pathologize, and marks a profound shift in research methods from the study of disorder to the study of well-being.This collection assembles qualitative and quantitative studies from a diverse group of scholars and disciplines, stressing the...

Globally, suicides account for a significant number of premature deaths every year. Traditional approaches to suicide research and prevention are not working for everyone, but why is this? And what can be done about it?In Critical Suicidology, a team of international scholars, practitioners, and people directly affected by suicide argue that the field of suicidology has become too focused on the biomedical paradigm: a model that pathologizes distress and obscures the socia...

Social Perspectives in Mental Health offers new practice frameworks that help to make sense of people's mental distress and recovery in relation to their social experience. This interdisciplinary volume promotes a holistic approach to mental health practice, with an emphasis on recovery and empowerment, and on building on the experiences of service users. The contributors explore the impact of social factors, such as power, abuse, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, on the causes and...

Through innovative analysis of theory and practice, this book offers refreshing critical perspectives on service-learning in higher education. It constructs a theoretical paradigm for service-learning which extends to critical pedagogy, and investigates critical reflection and academic reflective writing, supported throughout by empirical evidence.

Psychiatry and psychology have a long and highly debated history in relation to gender. In particular, they have attracted criticism for policing the boundaries of ‘normal’ gender expression through gender identity diagnoses, such as transvestism, transsexualism, gender identity disorder and gender dysphoria.Drawing on discursive psychology, this book traces the historical development of psychiatric constructions of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ gender expression. It contextualizes the r...

This volume presents a contemporary and comprehensive overview of the great diversity of theoretical interests, new ideas, and practical applications that characterize social psychological approaches to stereotyping and prejudice.All the contributions are written by renowned scholars in the field, with some chapters focusing on fundamental principles, including research questions about the brain structures that help us categorize and judge others, the role of evolution in prejudice...