Explore the vast range of titles available.

This groundbreaking book is the first guide for families and mental health professionals to include both a personal and professional psychotherapeutic narrative which acknowledges the deep psychological trauma of loving someone in psychosis.

This is a book written not just by a professional transpersonal psychotherapist but by someone who has walked the heart-rending path and experienced the psychological trauma of loving someone in psychosis; psychosis which still remains the greatest taboo in society today, together with its implicit diagnosis of a lifelong sentence of medication and no cure. It is in the main a personal and moving narrative of a mother looking to help her son avoid such a lifelong sentence of medication whilst trying to research holistic resources and alternative approaches for treatment at the same time as negotiating the vagaries of the current mental health system. It is often a tale of despair and frustration, yet also gives a compassionate voice. Transpersonal and transgenerational psychotherapeutic insights back up the personal narrative. It includes an accessible inquiry into how unconscious forces influence our mind, our bodies and the entire family system. Its hypothesis is that if we cannot understand our own unconscious responses how can we understand those of our loved ones in psychotic episodes?

One mother's fight to support her son and change a broken system In his early twenties, Mindy Greiling's son, Jim, was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder after experiencing delusions that demanded he kill his mother. At the time, and for more than a decade after, Greiling was a Minnesota state legislator who struggled, along with her husband, to navigate and improve the state's inadequate mental health system. Fix What You Can is an illuminating and frank account of caring for a person with a mental illness, told by a parent and advocate. Greiling describes challenges shared by many families, ranging from the practical (medication compliance, housing, employment) to the heartbreaking-suicide attempts, victimization, and illicit drug use. Greiling confronts the reality that some people with serious mental illness may be dangerous and reminds us that medication works-if taken. The book chronicles her efforts to pass legislation to address problems in the mental health system, including obstacles to parental access to information and insufficient funding for care and research. It also recounts Greiling's painful memories of her grandmother, who was confined in an institution for twenty-three years-recollections that strengthen her determination that Jim's treatment be more humane. Written with her son's cooperation, Fix What You Can offers hard-won perspective, practical advice, and useful resources through a brave and personal story that takes the long view of what success means when coping with mental illness.

Parents play an important role in access to mental health care for children and adolescents. They are often the first to seek professional help, yet their help-seeking experiences are not well documented. This study investigates parents' help-seeking for children and adolescents with emotional and behavioural problems. A thematic analysis of interviews with 15 parents showed three main themes describing the help-seeking experience: Pathways to mental health care; intra- and inter-personal infl uences; and the impact of service use experiences. Overall, parents needed to persist through an often arduous process to obtain appropriate mental health care for their children. They often found it difficult to understand the process to obtain help and encountered numerous obstacles. Greater focus on supporting parents in their critical role of identifying mental health problems in their children and gaining early access to appropriate mental health care is needed.

Raising a child or teenager with a psychological condition is a \"perfect storm\" of stress, sadness, and uncertainty. How can you find the best treatments and help your child overcome emotional, behavioral, and academic challenges--while keeping yourself and your family strong? As a parent, you may feel isolated and alone, but the reality is that a lot of families are in the same boat. Ann Douglas knows firsthand just how daunting it can be. In this compassionate and empowering guide, she combines the vital lessons she has learned with vivid stories from other parents and advice from leading psychologists. Several record-keeping forms can be downloaded and printed for repeated use. The book cuts through the often-confusing clinical jargon and speaks from the heart about what matters most: the well-being of your child.

This article documents work with a group of parents in Central Australia who have a son or daughter who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The first part of the article collects some of the parents' reflections on the effects of schizophrenia on their lives and their ways of responding to them, while the second part is a collective document produced with the group about their skills and knowledges. This group work has led to the production of a larger booklet for the wider community, as well as networking and partnering with local community mental health organisations, and advocacy and lobbying of politicians and health services.

This paper from Bangladesh presents an overview of narrative approaches to work with mothers and their children who have intellectual disabilities. In what can be traumatic contexts, this work is based on mothers' and children's skills, knowledges, values, and connections. Through the course of both individual and group work, blame and stigma are externalised, and the love and care mothers have for their children - as well as their children's 'special abilities' - are brought more to the fore. This paper also presents an alternative intake questionnaire that can help to diminish the effects of pathologising language, and elicit accounts of care and connection.

This paper introduces the concept of Experience Consultant. Ellen Walnum is a Norwegian woman with the experience of growing up with a mother who had psychiatric difficulties. She has also had the experience of a mental health crisis. Determined to put these experiences to work for the benefit of others, Ellen is now employed as an Experience Consultant working with professionals, with mothers who have psychiatric difficulties and with their children. This paper describes some of the key skills involved in the work of Experience Consultants. It also offers a vision for re-thinking mental health services as partnerships built on a combination of 'professional knowledge' and 'experience knowledge'. This paper was crafted from an interview1 and was delivered as a keynote address at the 8th International Narrative Therapy and Community Work Conference, which was held at Agder University College in Kristiansand, Norway, June 2007.