This book brings together current research on recovery and wellbeing, to inform mental health systems and wider community development.

SELFHOOD is a practical self-help book, designed to help people to recover their sense of self, be happier and more fulfilled. Readers will learn a great deal about themselves, others and life. Readers will discover what selfhood means, how closely selfhood is linked to emotional and mental wellbeing and mental illness, the components of selfhood, how selfhood is lost, the feature of low and high selfhood, and how to reclaim one's sense of selfhood.SELFHOOD contains many practical suggests and recommended actions, devised to enhance people's sense of self. It is simply not possible to feel good, to regularly experience emotional wellbeing and mental health if your level of selfhood is low. SELFHOOD is the first of Dr. Terry Lynch's Mental Wellness Book Series.

Focuses on a shift away from traditional clinical preoccupations towards new priorities of supporting the patient.

Promoting recovery from mental health problems is a guiding principle within modern mental health care. Working in partnership with service users, new practice techniques are being designed and delivered that can allow individuals to thrive within society and move towards a fulfilling life beyond their diagnosis. Recovery remains a broad and subjective term though and understanding what this means for your service users and how to implement recovery into your practice is an important challenge. Developed in partnership with Certitude – an influential charity providing support for people with mental health problems or learning disabilities – this book will answer all your questions about recovery in mental health nursing. It provides clear explanations and practical guidance that you can immediately bring into your work on placement.

It is only in the past 20 years that the concept of 'recovery' from mental health has been more widely considered and researched. Before then, it was generally considered that 'stability' was the best that anyone suffering from a mental disorder could hope for. But now it is recognised that, throughout their mental illness, many patients develop new beliefs, feelings, values, attitudes, and ways of dealing with their disorder. The notion of recovery from mental illness is thus rapidly being accepted and is inserting more hope into mainstream psychiatry and other parts of the mental health care system around the world. Yet, in spite of conceptual and other challenges that this notion raises, including a variety of interpretations, there is scarcely any systematic philosophical discussion of it. This book is unique in addressing philosophical issues - including conceptual challenges and opportunities - raised by the notion of recovery of people with mental illness. Such recovery - particularly in relation to serious mental illness such as schizophrenia - is often not about cure and can mean different things to different people. For example, it can mean symptom alleviation, ability to work, or the striving toward mental well-being (with or without symptoms). The book addresses these different meanings and their philosophical grounds, bringing to the fore perspectives of people with mental illness and their families as well as perspectives of philosophers, mental health care providers and researchers, among others. The important new work will contribute to further research, reflective practice and policy making in relation to the recovery of people with mental illness.It is essential reading for philosophers of health, psychiatrists, and other mental care providers, as well as policy makers.

"Music triggered a healing process from within me. I started singing for the joy of singing myself and it helped me carry my recovery beyond the state I was in before I fell ill nine years ago to a level of well-being that I haven't had perhaps for thirty years." This book explores the experiences of people who took part in a vibrant musical community for people experiencing mental health difficulties, SMART (St Mary Abbotts Rehabilitation and Training). Ansdell (a music therapist/researcher) and DeNora (a music sociologist) describe their long-term ethnographic work with this group, charting the creation and development of a unique music project that won the 2008 Royal Society for Public Health Arts and Health Award. Ansdell and DeNora track the 'musical pathways' of a series of key people within SMART, focusing on changes in health and social status over time in relation to their musical activity. The book includes the voices and perspectives of project members and develops with them a new understanding of how music promotes their health and wellbeing. A contemporary ecological understanding of 'music and change' is outlined, drawing on and further developing theory from music sociology and Community Music Therapy. This innovative book will be of interest to anyone working in the mental health field, but also music therapists, sociologists, musicologists, music educators and ethnomusicologists. This volume completes a three part 'triptych', alongside the other volumes, Music Asylums: Wellbeing Through Music in Everyday Life, and How Music Helps: In Music Therapy and Everyday Life.