Inpatient mental health care is an essential part of community-based mental health care in the UK. Patients admitted to acute mental health wards are often experiencing high levels of distress and acute mental illness and need to be assessed, managed, and treated by a wide team of mental health care professionals. Inpatient care is often a traumatic experience for patients and their relatives which can define their relationship with mental health care services. Reforming inpatient psychiatry is a priority for both patients and staff, yet there are few reference texts on this psychiatric specialty. The Oxford Textbook of Inpatient Psychiatry bridges this gap by offering a comprehensive and pragmatic guide to the UK's inpatient mental health care system today. Written and edited by a multidisciplinary team, this innovative resource discusses the real-life experiences and challenges of a wide range of professionals working on acute mental health wards. Organized into 8 sections this resource covers nursing, team leadership, multidisciplinary work, psychology, and medical aspects. Individual chapters address key topics such as the management of children and adolescents, and contain information on up-to-date research and best practice. Focusing on the dignity and autonomy of patients, this unique resource offers a model for clinical and organizational practice both at a national and international level.

From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency is the first book devoted to the social history of people with learning disabilities in Britain. Approaches to learning disabilities have changed dramatically in recent years. The implementation of 'Care in the Community', the campaign for disabled rights and the debate over the education of children with special needs have combined to make this one of the most controversial areas in social policy today. The nine original research essays collected here cover the social history of learning disability from the Middle Ages through the establishment of the National Health Service. They will not only contribute to a neglected field of social and medical history but also illuminate and inform current debates. The information presented here will have a profound impact on how professionals in mental health, psychiatric nursing, social work and disabled rights understand learning disability and society's responses to it over the course of history.

Includes section "Book reviews".

The nineteenth century was a time of extraordinary scientific innovation, but with the rise of psychiatry, faiths and popular beliefs were often seen as signs of a diseased mind. By exploring the beliefs of asylum patients, we see the nineteenth century in a new light, with science, faith, and the supernatural deeply entangled in a fast-changing world. The birth of psychiatry in the early nineteenth-century fundamentally changed how madness was categorised and understood. A century on, their conceptions of mental illness continue to influence our views today. Beliefs and behaviour were divided up into the pathological and the healthy. The influence of religion and the supernatural became significant measures of insanity in individuals, countries, and cultures. Psychiatrists not only thought they could transform society in the industrial age but also explain the many strange beliefs expressed in the distant past. Troubled by Faith explores these ideas about the supernatural across society through the prism of medical history. It is a story of how people continued to make sense of the world in supernatural terms, and how belief came to be a medical issue. This cannot be done without exploring the lives of those who found themselves in asylums because of their belief in ghosts, witches, angels, devils, and fairies, or because they though themselves in divine communication, or were haunted by modern technology. The beliefs expressed by asylum patients were not just an expression of their individual mental health, but also provide a unique reflection of society at the time - a world still steeped in the ideas and imagery of folklore and faith in a fast-changing world.