The Psychiatric Team and the Social Definition of Schizophrenia
An Anthropological Study of Person and Illness

A study of schizophrenia arising from an anthropological investigation in a modern psychiatric hospital.

Robert J. Barrett (Author)

9780521031462, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2006

360 pages, 6 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.1 x 2 cm, 0.544 kg

'I recommend the book highly to clinicians and researchers … Clinicians in training, including psychiatric registrars, would, I believe, derive great benefit and be pleasurably educated.' Helen Herrman, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

This book is a study of schizophrenia in a modern psychiatric hospital. Its purpose is to develop a contextual understanding of schizophrenia by studying the clinical setting in which this disorder is experienced, diagnosed and treated. It arises from an anthropological investigation of the day-to-day work of clinical staff. The author offers a penetrating analysis of the language used by hospital staff as they write and talk about their patients and traces the evolution of the concept of schizophrenia, showing how contemporary theoretical constructs are applied by clinical staff. In its analysis of the schizophrenia team and of those experiencing the disorder, this book will reveal to mental health professionals many of the unspoken assumptions of their role. It will also confirm to social scientists and clinicians the power of the ethnographic approach in psychiatric research.

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Schizophrenia in context
2. Time and space in a progressive psychiatric hospital
3. Professional domains and the dimensions of a case
4. Clinical teams and the 'whole person'
5. Documenting a case: the written construction of schizophrenia
6. Moral trajectories: from acute psychosis to 'chronic schizophrenic'
7. Historical formulations of schizophrenia: degeneration and disintegration
8. Contemporary formulations of schizophrenia: explaining the inexplicable
9. Schizophrenia for practical purposes
10. The person, the case, and schizophrenia
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Psychiatry [MMH]