Psychiatric Labeling | Mental Health Disorders | Labeling People | Stigma

The Strengths Model: A Recovery-Oriented Approach to Mental Health Services, by Charles A. Rapp, Richard J. Goscha

The Strengths Model presents a compelling alternative to the traditional medical approach. An evidence-based approach to helping people with a psychiatric disability is more productive in helping to identify and achieve and maintain meaningful and important life goals. The strengths model has matured into a robust vision of mental health services.

The Strengths Model is both a philosophy of practice and the book provides a specific set of tools and methods, which are designed to facilitate a recovery-oriented partnership between the client and professional.

The Ethics of Labeling in Mental Health,
by Kristie Madsen, Peter Leech

The myths of mental illness are numerous and negatively affect the lives of patients on a regular basis. For this reason they demand exposure and rectification, and this book proposes the means to accomplish both. The focus of this book is the institution of professional mental health as it operates in America today, specifically addressing how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSMMD), the primary resource used in the mental health profession, has influenced much larger social issues.

Chapters are organized around the discussion of prominent myths of the mental health system. Case studies of mental health patients are presented to illustrate the serious misfortunes that befall individuals who have been mislabeled and mistreated. As the examples reveal, in many instances the patients lives have been plagued by the designation of mental disorders that perhaps never existed.

The book challenges the mental health system to evolve beyond the DSMMD focus on pathology and develop a more humane method of addressing the functional needs of patients. International perspectives are presented, and specific steps are outlined for providing mental health services that adequately serve individuals with serious and persistent mental illnesses.

Beyond the Disease Model of Mental Disorders, by Donald Kiesler

Kiesler's Beyond the Disease Model of Mental Disorder goes beyond recent volumes which argue that psychotropic medications are being overused and abused in contemporary mental health settings. Elliott Valenstein, for example, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, recently argues that people should be highly suspicious of the claim that all mental illness is primarily a biochemical disorder. In his 1998 book, Blaming the Brain: The Truth about Drugs and Mental Health, Valenstein does not argue that drugs never work or that patients should discontinue taking medication. Valenstein's central point, instead, is that drugs do not attack the real cause of a disorder, since biochemical theories are an unproven hypothesis and probably a false one.

Inasmuch as Kiesler's volume is concerned exclusively with scientific explanations of mental disorders, it does not review at all the evidence for psychotropic medications or for other treatments of mental disorders.

Kiesler does highlight a message similar to that of Valenstein, who rejects the hypothesis that mental illness is primarily a biochemical disorder. After a comprehensive review of the relevant scientific evidence, Kiesler concludes that henceforth the study of mental disorders must be guided by multicausal theories and research that systematically include an array of biological, psychological, and sociocultural causal factors. Kiesler adds that, in order for this to be accomplished, the mental health field and the public at large must first abandon the invalid monocausal biomedical (disease) model of mental disorder.

Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis, Edited by Paula J. Caplan, and Lisa Cosgrove

Psychiatric diagnoses are subjective rather than scientific. The authors further contend that bias is often the basis for the subjective analysis (a matter of opinion rather than factually based) provided by psychiatry today.

Living with Depression: why Biology and Biography Matter Along the Path to Hope and Healing, by Debora Serani

This book "manages to explain depression in terms of human biology and experience without downplaying either aspect. Many times authors concentrate on one or the other, leaving the reader with the impression that only nature (or nurture) causes depression. These books then often purpose one type of solution (i.e. only medication or only talk therapy), leaving the reader only have-informed.

Living with Depression give[s] a truly holistic view of depression and its treatment, it gives it in an easily understandable format." The book also provides a discussion concerning stigma of those with mental health disorders. Review - NAMI Advocate, Fall 2011

Overcoming ADHD Without Medication: A Guidebook for Parent's and Teachers,
by the AYCNP

How parents and teachers can help children to overcome ADHD and childhood depression, naturally. Lifestyle changes, educational efforts can be very effective. Many professional and other resources listed. Extensive bibliography and index.

A Does of Sanity: Mind, Medicine, and Misdiagnosis, by Sydney Walker

Walker's hypotheses is an accurate summation of the inadequacies of the present psychiatric system.

Review from Library Journal:
Walker, director of Southern California's Neuropsychiatric Institute, here argues that clinicians should not rely exclusively on standard psychiatric labels. He contends that labels such as depression, hyperactivity, etc., often hide medically treatable disorders.

He notes a trend in psychiatry to lump individuals under broad categorical labels, e.g., mental retardation, which often obscures the specific problems. Drawing upon 30 years of clinical experience, he cites cases illustrating the fallibility of psychiatric labeling.

Walker writes that the current diagnostic system survives because of its support from the American Psychiatric Association, drug companies, and managed care providers. This thought-provoking book is an effective complement to Peter Kramer's Listening to Prozac. Recommended for public and academic libraries. --Dennis Glenn Twiggs, Winston-Salem, N.C. -Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Your Drug May Be Your Problem, Revised Edition: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications, by Peter Breggin, M.D., David Cohen

Though sometimes overstating his point, Peter Breggin offers many sound arguments for disputing the current practice of psychiatric labeling and why many choose not to take psychiatric drugs prescribed through mainstream psychiatric practice. This theme has been developed more eloquently and in a more "politically correct" manner by other mainstream psychiatrists and psychologists.

Meeting the Challenge of Bipolar Disorder: Self Help Strategies that Work! [eBook] by the Association for Natural Psychology, edited by Gabrielle Woods PhD, Foreword by Laura Pipoly PC, EdD.

Well-developed self help ideas and reasonable rational for bipolar disorder beyond the medical model are presented in this eBook.

Talking Back To Prozac: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Today's Most Controversial Drug, by Peter Breggin

"There is unquestionably a great deal of truth in what Breggin writes. Let the pill-swallower beware." --Los Angeles Times "Dr. Breggin is the conscience of American psychiatry." --Bertram P. Karon, Ph.D., author of Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia.

No Child Left Different,

No Child Left Different, edited by Pennsylvania clinical psychologist and professor, Sharna Olfman--a book on childhood mental health disorders, the media, and overprescribing of drugs, that is worth reading.

Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health, by Elliot Valenstein

Detailed analysis (and proof) of how the pharmaceutical industry sold the medical field, over decades, on the idea of pharmaceutical treatment for psychiatric disorders. Valenstein provides ample logical reasoning on the idea that psychiatric disorders are not caused by a "chemical imbalance" and that the medical model, while convenient, is not accurate.