Learning outcomes
Part one: Concepts
Chapter 1: From disorder to experience
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Explain why terminology is especially important in relation to mental health
- Explain what is meant in this book by ‘distress’
- Describe some of the problems associated with everyday definitions of normality
- Explain the problem of thresholds in relation to psychiatric diagnosis
- Define key terms, including: service user, distress, madness psychosis, neurosis, hallucination and delusion
Chapter 2: History
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Understand how distress came to be seen in the present era as an issue of health, within the domain of medicine
- Understand how many modern debates (e.g. about the causes of distress) are rooted in historical debates about models of distress
- Understand the social context of the development of our ideas about distress and treatments
Chapter 3: Culture
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Explain a working definition of culture
- Understand the difference between emic and etic approaches to mental health and distress
- Identify the different prevalent rates for diagnosed mental disorders across cultures
- Understand how various societies view mental health and distress and the differences between some of them
Chapter 4: Biology
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Describe some challenges to the idea that biology is the primary cause of distress
- Explain why ignoring biology in relation to distress is inadequate
- Describe Rose’s ‘lifelines’ model of genes and environment
- Describe Schore’s account of brain development in infants
- Explain the importance of plasticity and specificity in relation to distress
Chapter 5: Diagnosis and formulation
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Identify some of the core assumptions underlying psychiatric diagnosis
- Explain how psychiatric diagnosis differs from most medical diagnosis
- Describe how issues of reliability and validity are relevant to psychiatric diagnosis
- Explain what a formulation of distress is
- Evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of formulation and psychiatric diagnosis
Chapter 6: Causal influences
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Explain why causal influences upon distress are difficult to identify and research
- Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the various research methods typically used to identify causal influences upon distress
- Describe the kinds of causal influences upon distress that researchers have explored
- Describe how these influences get translated into practice by mental health professionals
Chapter 7: Service users and survivors
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Understand what the service user/ survivor movement is
- Understand what its key concerns are
- Explain how this movement has developed alternative forms of support like the Hearing Voices Network
- Understand about what it is like to hear voices and what helps people to cope with distressing voices
Chapter 8: Interventions
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Describe what medication, psychotherapy and community psychology interventions are
- Understand the theories of change on which they are based
- Identify some of the debates concerning these interventions
- Understand how the efficacy of interventions is investigated
- Understand the limitations of efficacy studies
Part two: Forms of distress
Chapter 9: Sadness and worry
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Describe how experiences of sadness and worry have varied across time and between cultures
- Identify the psychiatric diagnoses commonly given to people experiencing clinical sadness and worry
- Describe the primary causal influences upon sadness and worry
- Explain which interventions are commonly given to people experiencing clinical sadness and worry
Chapter 10: Sexuality and gender
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Understand what is included in the section ‘Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders’ in the DSM IV-TR and the use of the terms sexual dysfunction, sexual disorder and gender identity disorder
- Understand why there is so much debate about these categories
- Understand the identified causal processes associated with sexual problems generally and specific diagnoses of sexual dysfunction
- Examine some of the social contexts that define particular sexual behaviours and gender identities
- Identify what kind of interventions are available and whether they are considered to be effective
Chapter 11: Madness
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Understand traditional biomedical approaches to understanding madness through psychiatric classifications like ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘psychosis’
- Appreciate some of the problems with this approach
- Understand of an alternative approach focused on specific problematic experiences or ‘complaints’
- Identify some of the social factors and psychological processes involved in the development of these psychotic experiences, and be able to evaluate the evidence for and against them
- Understand the main approaches to helping people who have these experiences and be able to evaluate the evidence for and against them
Chapter 12: Distressing bodies and eating
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Understand how eating problems and weight-related concerns have been defined in the mental health literature
- Understand why weight and body image concerns are at the centre of eating-related problems
- Understand what kinds of causal processes are associated with the problematic experiences
- Identify what are considered to be symptoms of eating disorders
- Examine the kinds of interventions that are available and whether they are effective
Chapter 13: Disordered personalities?
After you have read this chapter, you will be able to:
- Explain what is meant by the term ‘personality disorder’
- Understand why there is so much debate about this category
- Understand what kinds of causal processes are associated with the problematic experiences seen as symptoms of personality disorder
- Examine the kinds of interventions that are available and whether they are effective