Mental Health and Illness: Practice and Service Issues
Special Issue of Health Sociology Review
Volume 19 Issue 4 December 2010
ii+126 pages ISBN 978-1-921348-57-0
Editors:
Pauline Savy, Anne-Maree Sawyer and Katy Richmond
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
La Trobe University, VIC, Australia
This special edition of Health Sociology Review (volume 19/4, 2010) is prompted by ongoing claims about escalating mental health problems and their management in Australia and other affluent countries. High prevalence disorders such as anxiety and depression, and alcohol and substance abuse are said to be epidemic. Following the closure of many large asylums in Australia, a number of reports have raised questions about the efficacy, scope and accessibility to community-based mental health services (eg, Not for Service published by the Human Rights Commission and the Mental Health Council of Australia, 2005).
This edition aims to facilitate discussion of central issues relating to mental health treatment, including effective professional practice, community care, access and equity, and the marginalization of sufferers of mental illness. Theoretical and empirical papers that contribute to sociological discussion and analysis are invited from across relevant disciplines within Australia and overseas. The following themes are suggested but other topic areas will be considered:
- Evaluation of particular therapies, for example, the widespread use of cognitive behaviour therapy, and the role of counseling for sufferers of psychotic illnesses
- Presentation and management of mental illness in emergency departments in public hospitals
- Evaluation of particular services, for example, age-specific services, and step-up/step-down facilities
- Social supports for mentally ill individuals and families, for example, welfare and housing
- Family relationships in mental illness, for example, children who care for mentally ill parents
- The place and evaluation of 21st century technology in the treatment of mental illness (internet, telephone, mobile phone, sms etc)
- Professionalisation and specialisation, for example, nurse practitioners and the treatment of mentally ill clients
- Forensic issues including management of psychiatric services in custodial settings and the evaluation of mental health courts
- Medication and compliance issues including the use of non-prescription drugs
- Working partnerships between mental health services and other health and welfare services, for example, in the case of client physical ill-health, unemployment, drug and alcohol misuse and where children require protection.
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