The Future of Mental Health: Deconstructing the Mental Disorder Paradigm

by Eric Maisel

Overview

The Future of Mental Health drills to the heart of the current mental health crisis, where hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide receive unwarranted "mental disorder diagnoses." It paints a picture of how mental health providers can improve their practices to better serve individuals in distress and outlines necessary steps for a mental health revolution. Eric Maisel's goal is to inject more human interaction into the therapeutic process.

Maisel powerfully deconstructs the "mental disorder" paradigm that is the foundation of current mental health practices. The author presents a revolutionary alternative, a "human experience" paradigm. He sheds a bright light on the differences between so-called "psychiatric medication" and mere chemicals with powerful effects, explains why the DSM-5 is silent on causes, silent on treatment, and wedded to illegitimate "symptom pictures." Maisel describes powerful helping alternatives like communities of care, and explains why one day "human experience specialists" may replace current mental health professionals.

An important book for both service providers and service users, The Future of Mental Health brilliantly unmasks current mental health practices and goes an important step further: it describes what we are obliged to do in order to secure better mental health services—and better mental health—for everyone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781412862493
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	12/30/2015
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Eric Maisel, an American psychotherapist, writes the “Rethinking Psychology” column for Psychology Today and leads workshops nationally and internationally. He is the author of more than forty books.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Our Human Experience

2 The Naturalness of Distress

3 Jettisoning Normal

4 Rethinking Diagnosis

5 What Shall We Call You?

6 The Mental Disorder Labeling Fraud

7 Chemicals versus Medication

8 On Meds

9 On Cause and Effect

10 Life Purpose, Meaning, and Value

11 Setting the Bar

12 The Human Experience Specialist

13 Twelve Shifts for Professionals

14 Institutions and Communities of Care

15 The "Mental Disorders" of Childhood

16 Understanding "Madness"

17 Alternatives to Diagnosis

18 The Brooklyn Project

19 Twenty Keys to a Mental Health Revolution

20 The Future of Your Mental Health

Suggested Reading

Index

Editorial Reviews

Eric Maisel goes a long way toward explaining our current situation and pointing us in new directions in his excellent new book. Highly recommended!” —Louis Breger, Founding President, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis “Dr. Maisel’s bold new book is a refreshing seed in [the] forlorn mental health landscape. Maisel not only paints a picture of what a new mental health countryside could look like, but he also provides useful suggestions of how we might get there and why it might be important that we start heading in that direction today.” —Tim Carey, Director of the Centre for Remote Health, a joint centre of Flinders University and Charles Darwin University, blogger at Psychology Today “Dr. Maisel envisions a new paradigm and framework that restores compassion, complexity, and dignity to the care of suffering souls. A ground-breaking book, a clarion call and a bold vision.” —Shawn Rubin, Editor in Chief, Journal of Humanistic Psychology and co-editor, University Professors Press “Eric Maisel's book is extraordinary. Profoundly innovative and revolutionary, it describes the Herculean but not impossible tasks facing the mental health establishment and reshuffles all the cards in psychiatry.” —Patrick Landman, Psychiatrist, Chairman, STOP DSM France “Maisel really throws the gauntlet down with this one, and the psychiatric community will find it difficult to ignore his challenge.” —Mark D. White, Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, blogger at Psychology Today, and author of The Illusion of Well-Being “The Future of Mental Health is a highly readable, compelling and challenging book on a topic that affects all of us. Everyone should read it! A wonderful and much needed book.” – Anne Cooke, Clinical Director, Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, coeditor Recent Advances in Understanding Mental Illness and Understanding Bipolar Disorder

From the Publisher