The Origins of Schizophrenia synthesizes key findings on a devastating mental disorder that has been increasingly studied over the past decade. Advances in epidemiology, translational neuroscience technology, and molecular and statistical genetics have recast schizophrenia's neurobiological nature, identifying new putative environmental risk factors and candidate susceptibility genes. Providing the latest clinical and neuroscience research developments in a comprehensive volume, this collection by world-renowned investigators answers a pressing need for balanced, thorough information, while pointing to future directions in research and interdisciplinary collaboration. The book, featuring a foreword by Robert Freedman, M.D., thoroughly examines these topics from the vantage points of epidemiologic, clinical, and basic neuroscience approaches, making it an essential resource for researchers in psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience and for clinical mental health professionals.

Schizophrenia was 20th century psychiatry's arch concept of madness. Yet for most of that century it was both problematic and contentious. This history explores schizophrenia's historic instability via themes such as symptoms, definition, classification and anti-psychiatry. In doing so, it opens up new ways of understanding 20th century madness.

Sorting out fact from fiction, one of the world's leading experts presents an absorbing account of what is actually know about the complex subject of schizophrenia.

For years lip service has been paid to a belief in a biological basis for schizophrenia, but ,nevertheless psychosocial and psychodynamic "theories" of schizophrenia have been promulgated, and these have detracted from the all important biological work, Eclecticism has ruled the day and has caused considerable confusion, As a result research in schizophrenia has not progressed as fast as it should have done and treatment has been less effective than it could otherwise have been. This book is devoted to a wholly biological approach to the problem of schizophrenia, in the hope that many more workers will enter this exciting field of research. A wide variety of topics is covered, including brain structure; the genetics, pathogenesis and treatment of schizophrenia; a consideration of dietary and immunological factors and finally a chapter on alcoholism as it seems possible that the problems of schizophrenia and addiction are linked. We are grateful to all our contributors and to MTP Press for their enthusiasm for this book. Gwynneth P Hemmings William A Hemmings XI SECTION 1: Structure 1 The brain stem reticular formation K. E. WEBSTER There can be no question that the brain stem reticular lormation no longer exercises the same fascination for neurologists that it did a quarter of a century ago.

A powerful account of how cultural anxieties about race shaped American notions of mental illness The civil rights era is largely remembered as a time of sit-ins, boycotts, and riots. But a very different civil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American protesters at Ionia—for political reasons as well as clinical ones. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents, Metzl shows how associations between schizophrenia and blackness emerged during the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s—and he provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions in our seemingly postracial America. This book was published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the book with one of the two covers.

From Aaron T. Beck and colleagues, this is the definitive work on the cognitive model of schizophrenia and its treatment. The volume integrates cognitive-behavioral and biological knowledge into a comprehensive conceptual framework. It examines the origins, development, and maintenance of key symptom areas: delusions, hallucinations, negative symptoms, and formal thought disorder. Treatment chapters then offer concrete guidance for addressing each type of symptom, complete with case examples and session outlines. Anyone who treats or studies serious mental illness will find a new level of understanding together with theoretically and empirically grounded clinical techniques.

The idea of "schizophrenia" as a disease has become profoundly influential both within the medical profession and amongst the general public. So strong is this idea that those who criticize it are apt to be dismissed as being either ignorant of the latest research or indifferent to the fate of the "mentally ill". This book challenges such ideas by offering a detailed critique of the origins and development of the concept and diagnosis of schizophrenia. Mary Boyle shows how such diagnoses did and still do rely on opinion rather than evidence, how they were characterized by conceptual confusion, and how subsequent research has been misrepresented. She therefore questions the validity of schizophrenia as illness, but emphasizes thatm this is not to deny the existence of bizarre behaviour. She offers alternative interpretations of such behaviour, and points out the need to ask searching questions about the labelling of some behaviour as symptomatic of mental illness. By focusing not on schizophrenics, but on those who diagnose schizophrenia, this book will undoubtedly attract some criticism and debate. Yet her approach allows the author to question traditional interpretations of bizarre behaviour, and to make more central the social and ethical issues which surround it.