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This chapter documents how activism in education politics turned the attention of conservative women to professional psychology as a logical next target. Fears of “brainwashing” segued into fears of mental health professionals and the policy making they promoted in Washington, D.C., resulting in conservative protest of an amorphous “mental health establishment.” Anticommunist activists characterized psychology as a dangerous medicine that could be used to manipulate thought and, by extension, political will. Although conservative intellectuals scoffed at the conspiracy theories circulated by the “hysterical” housewives, the women's arguments nevertheless found their way into criticism articulated by scholars and politicians by the mid-1960s.

This chapter analyzes legal and social policy barriers to improving treatment for people who are suicidal. It supports Edwin Shneidman’s assertion that suicidality is not necessarily a symptom of underlying mental illness. The most successful approaches are community-based skills training. However, liability and risk concerns lead to overhospitalization. The chapter exposes myths about sources of liability (more often alleged medication errors than failure to hospitalize). The chapter proposes various reforms, including legislation to limit liability of mental health professionals from suits resulting from outpatient suicides and changes in involuntary commitment policies to distinguish between suicidality and mental illness.

This chapter examines the sources of strain for community-based practitioners historically, and how an understanding of the “poetics” and “micropolitics” of practice currently can help in the actual conditions of public mental health practice. It argues that poetics and micropolitics, as generative frames, legitimize the local social arena as a locus of a necessary expertise for psychotherapists. They are action-oriented frames that bring to the field the power of the mythical, generative, metaphoric word, opposed to the logos, the illusory literal word at the center of the Western metaphysical tradition that Jacques Derrida has relentlessly deconstructed. They bring poiesis, generation, to its place in a well-developed, theoretically-sound community mental health, as an area of participatory action-oriented science.

This chapter examines the service configurations of the main agencies delivering services to mothers with mental health needs and their children and discusses recent organizational developments in order to establish the extent to which these services are equipped to respond to the needs of such families. It outlines the policy in which mental health professionals and child care workers deliver services. It also examines the role of voluntary organisations in providing services for mothers with mental health needs as this sector has been the source of some innovative projects.

The chapter contains an outline of mental health policy and legislation including the role of the Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP). Trends in the use of the MHA are examined. Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and the field are used as a conceptual lens. The chapter argues that mental health social work, in common, with other areas of practice has become dominated by risk and risk management. This has occurred at the expense of relationship-based approaches.

The Beyond Trauma research project aimed to improve mental health services for female survivors of childhood sexual abuse. It explored their experiences of services, and their views on how these might be improved. It also consulted mental health professionals and voluntary sector agencies working with survivors for their perspectives on the issue. This chapter highlights the author's experience as a researcher within the Beyond Trauma project in order to examine the ethical issues that arise within the ethical governance process. By examining a specific example, this chapter reflects on the governance process from the social researchers, participants' and professionals's perspectives. This chapter also considers the implications of the Research Ethics Committee (REC) decisions on research, knowledge and services.

This chapter discusses defense strategies in parricide cases. It highlights the importance of the early involvement of mental health professionals in helping defense lawyers understand the dynamics that lead sons or daughters to kill their parents. It explains the law of self-defense, with special attention to battered child syndrome (BCS), given its relevance to youths who kill their abusive parents. Parallels between battered woman's syndrome and BCS are examined. The chapter concludes with a review of other mental health status defenses, most notably the insanity defense. Adult parricide offenders are more likely to be found not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) than adolescents. NGRI judgments are more common among adult parricide offenders than younger parricide offenders because adults who kill parents are more likely than their adolescent counterparts to have a documented history of severe mental illness and to be delusional at the time of the killing.

This chapter discusses the criticisms of philosopher Michel Foucault on the relationship between mental health institutions and the national government. Foucault criticizes psychiatrists and psychologists for conspiring with the state in providing suggestions and information concerning treatment for psychologically distressed suspects of terrorism. He believes that mental health professionals are subsidiary authorities within small-scale legal systems, that they act as “adviser[s] in punishment [who make] judgments of normality, attributions of causality, assessments of possible changes, anticipations as to the offender's [suspect's] future.” He asserts that the government's knowledge of a detainee's mental health implies the shift of the state's imposition of power from the suspects' body (torture) to their mind (torment).

The chapter challenges the legal notion of dangerous and severe personality disorder from a sociological point of view. The author also argues for appreciating evaluative aspects of conceptual issues in psychiatry, in addition to the scientific perspective. Findings from a study in which the author conducted semi-structured interviews with mental health professionals who work in forensic settings are presented. Different values held by the respondents are grouped into six different models of sociopathy or psychopathic disorder. It is shown how different values underlie different views on perceived dangerousness and psychopathy.

Treatment guidelines may be a useful tool in training mental health professionals to combine clinical experience with current research information in a format that enables the practitioner to narrow treatment variance to the benefit of the patient. On the other hand, treatment guidelines have the potential to narrow the range of available services and to stifle clinician creativity. This chapter uses as a template for comparing treatment guidelines those prepared by the American Psychological Association (APA). These guidelines for the generation of guidelines highlight the process and the political context of treatment guidelines. The chapter also examines the existing treatment guidelines for depression in some detail. The analysis of existing guidelines provides the background for the generation of more extensive guidelines.

This chapter discusses the importance of a thorough evaluation by a mental health professional of individuals charged with killing a parent. It emphasizes the need for corroborative sources and identifies necessary components of an evaluation. These include an assessment of the individual's level of personality development. It presents the main tenets and levels of a personality theory used widely in the classification of offenders, the Interpersonal Level of Maturity Theory. This theory is very helpful when one is attempting to understand the dynamics that led an individual to engage in violence, determine the credibility of the person's statements, and chart appropriate intervention strategies. The discussion also includes ways of identifying parricide offenders whose destructive and violent behavior appears characterologically based; this individual is referred to as the nihilistic killer.

Chapter 2 carries forth the book’s examination of the ways suicide has been configured as a problem of aspiration and striving in the capital city. Shifting to the mental health setting, it delves into therapeutic interactions between clinicians and patients and their kin to explore the modes of attention and practice by which clinicians sought to discern and intervene against suicide risk. In this pursuit, clinicians scrutinized the aspirations and projects of worth in the lives of individuals and families. As clinicians read patients’ lives for signs of mislaid ambition as a marker of suicide risk, they focused on a number of domains of everyday striving and investment, from education and work to love and parenting. The ethnographic case studies presented in this chapter explore the messy, power-laden ways clinicians assessed these objects and intimacies of aspirational struggle for their feasibility, worth, and latent perils. Particular attention is given to how histories of social difference concerning class, caste, gender, and community shape the ways clinicians discerned intemperate aspiration and their drawn links to suicide risk among patients and their kin.

This chapter focuses on values and how they are impacted by war experiences. The author examines his own experiences as he commanded a combat stress control detachment during a major troop surge. Using an autobiographical approach, the author discusses how engrained personal values impacted his deployment and command experience, both positively and negatively. Lessons learned and case examples from this deployment experience are shared as a way to identify key aspects of military culture and the unique challenges that are faced in deployed environments. Ethical issues faced as a deployed social worker are considered along with some unique tensions that can exist between service branches while attempting to support service members struggling with combat operational stress. Finally, specific leadership lessons are shared when leading a team of mental health professionals who are dealing with stress and secondary trauma of their own.

The early 21st century has seen a resurgence in the performance of exorcism in the Catholic Church.  Exorcism is a solemn rite that must be performed by a priest with the express consent of the bishop with jurisdiction in the area where the exorcism takes place.  Both a form of healing for afflicted individuals and a discourse on evil at large in the contemporary world, exorcism lies at the intersection of therapy and cosmology in the world's largest religious institution.  Its social and cultural significance is therefore worthy of analysis. This chapter takes a step in that direction through consideration of ethnographic material from exorcists, mental health professionals who assist and consult with them, and the afflicted people who seek their help.

In Scolding Therapists About Social Justice and Advocacy, the authors address the daunting nature of advocacy for oppressed and marginalized populations. On one hand is the sanctimonious and self-righteous behavior of others who claim mental health professionals are not doing enough. On the other hand is the realities that true advocacy work is complicated, challenging, difficult, and often unplanned. Such efforts come about due to the nature of the work to which mental health professionals are engaged. However, there are innumerable benefits to engaging in altruistic, selfless, advocacy efforts, including contributions to client welfare, social justice, meaningfulness, and personal well-being. Advocacy efforts can change the lives of clients and helping professionals.