The Palgrave Handbook of Adult Mental Health

This Handbook gathers together empirical and theoretical chapters from leading scholars and clinicians to examine the broad issue of adult mental health. The contributors draw upon data from a variety of contexts to illustrate the multiple ways in which language as action can assist us in better understanding the discursive practices that surround adult mental health. Conversation and discourse analysis are useful, related approaches for the study of mental health conditions, particularly when underpinned by a social constructionist framework. In the field of mental health, the use of these two approaches is growing, with emergent implications for adults with mental health conditions, their practitioners, and/or their families.Divided into four parts; Reconceptualising Mental Health and Illness; Naming, Labelling and Diagnosing; The Discursive Practice of Psychiatry; and Therapy and Interventions; this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of current debates regarding adult mental health.

About the Author

Michelle O'Reilly is Senior Lecturer at the University of Leicester, Greenwood Institute of Child Health, UK. She specialises in discourse and conversation analysis of child mental health interactions. Michelle has a particular interest in childhood autism and has published books and papers in both mental health and autism. Jessica Nina Lester is Assistant Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. She teaches research methods courses, including discourse analysis. Her research is focused on the study and development of qualitative methodologies, with much of her work positioned at the intersection of discourse studies and disability studies.