Fighting for Mental Health
A Personal View

A 2002 collection of insights into the core concerns for modern psychiatry from one of the world's best-respected psychiatrists.

Norman Sartorius (Author)

9780521582438, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 August 2002

268 pages, 19 b/w illus. 3 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.53 kg

'This book dignifies those who struggle with illness or care in families.' Psychology and Psychiatry

As Director of the Division of Mental Health at the World Health Organization, and subsequently President of the World Psychiatric Association, Norman Sartorius has over many years been in a position to survey the state of psychiatry worldwide and to campaign for greater equity and honesty in the clinical and research agenda. The essays collected in this 2002 book represent his latest thinking, as well as including his own selection from among a few of his innumerable speeches and previously published articles. They range from trenchant critiques of mental health service delivery and prevention to more light-hearted, anecdotal pieces on the use of language and how to get things done. All point to the core concerns for mental health programmes today: definition of needs; the role of psychiatry worldwide; and the challenges that urbanization presents for mental health. This is a book that every psychiatrist will wish to own.

Part I. The Context of Health and Mental Health Programmes: 1. Updating 1789
2. Doubts about three of the many dogmas of development
3. Overlaps and confusions
4. Nearly forgotten: mental health needs of an urbanized planet
5. The Mozart effect and Keshan disease
6. The paradoxes about psychiatry
7. On advice and consultation
Part II. Mental Health and Medicine: 8. Psychiatry in the framework of primary health care: a threat or boost for psychiatry?
9. The limits of mental health care in general medical services
10. The mental health adventure of the World Health Organization
11. Mental health care for the elderly? Another thirty years to wait
12. On words I like to hate
Part III. Psychiatry and Mental Health Programmes: 13. Assessing needs for psychiatric services
14. Why are mental and neurological disorders not being prevented?
15. The seven vices of psychiatry
16. Brueghel's Everyman: a cover page for a book on research in psychiatry
17. And then there were five …
18. Enabling
19. Psychiatry in developing countries
Index.

Subject Areas: Psychiatry [MMH]