Book Review: Understanding Mental Illness

As a licensed marriage and family therapist and mental health writer, I am always interested in new books about mental health and the way we treat those with mental illnesses, so it was with interest that I picked up Marianne Richards’s self-published new book, Understanding Mental Illness: Comprehensive and Jargon Free 6th Edition. While Richards does give a comprehensive overview of the history of mental illness, the ways in which we as a society often treat it, and the defining characteristics of the most common diagnoses, I was left wondering just how this information might apply to someone who suffers from a mental illness or a professional treating this person. Richards, who herself was diagnosed with Asperger’s years ago and experienced firsthand the stigma that those with mental illness often feel, begins with a historical look at mental illness. “Throughout history, individuals who have not conformed to the expectations of society (or their tribe) risked exclusion,” she writes. Much of this can be attributed to the difficulty society has in defining just what sanity is. While it is helpful to recognize non-conforming behavior, it is not helpful to act upon it irrationally, which is often referred to as “moral panic.” Historically, this exclusion was most often in insane Asylums. “These were not only people with active mental illnesses but so-called social misfits whose only problem was eccentricity or minor social aberrations,” Richards writes. Ho...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Book Reviews Disorders Education General Psychology Psychotherapy Self-Help Treatment Body Dysmorphic Disorder books on mental illness books on the history of mental illness Compulsive Disorder Family therapy Hippocrates Marian Source Type: news