Prevention in Mental Health Care Time for a new approach

Prevention in Mental Health Care: Time for a new approach focuses on the limitations in current psychiatric practice and research. Many professionals working in mental health care, as well as patients with psychiatric symptoms, are dissatisfied with what is currently offered by the discipline, with respect to the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

This book discusses possibilities and opportunities for change, and is the first to combine recent scientific research results with insights from philosophy and art. Illustrating these points with elaborate case studies, Prevention in Mental Health Care promotes a deeper understanding and a new model of mental health care, with an emphasis on prevention and natural recovery.

Prevention in Mental Health Care will be of use to qualified or trainee practitioners, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, occupational therapists and nurses working with the current classification systems and treatment methods in psychiatry. Furthermore, the book will appeal to students, lecturers and researchers, as well as those with a general interest in mental health care.

Introduction Part I: Limitations in current psychiatric practice and research 1. Categorical classification 2. Scientific research and its omissions 3. The nature of social contact 4. Mystic experiences 5. The mind-brain problem Part II: Possibilities and opportunities for change in psychiatry 6. Transdiagnostic phenomenological symptom-dimensions 7. Biological markers in psychiatric disorders 8. From clinical staging and profiling to prevention in psychiatry 9. Evidence for preventive treatment in psychiatry 10. The stress-relaxation continuum 11. Redefinition of health and illness in psychiatry 12. The authentic self Part III: Case examples 13. Thomas 14. Lizzie 15. Martin Conclusions and future directions

Dorien Nieman is associate professor and Head of the Cognition lab at the Department of Psychiatry, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, where she has worked since 1996. She has (co)authored more than 80 articles in (inter)national journals, several book-chapters and a book on topics such as psychotherapy, biomarkers, prediction and prevention of psychiatric disorders.