Return to Community: Building Support Systems for People with Psychiatric Disabilities - Softcover

Carling, Paul J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898623235 ISBN 13: 9780898623239

Publisher: The Guilford Press, 1994

Synopsis

Provides a comprehensive, practical approach to fully integrating people with serious mental illnesses into the community. Drawing from a range of resources, including mental health consumers and their families, this pathbreaking work lays the groundwork for a critical rethinking of how we view people labeled "mentally ill".

Defining "community integration," the author examines current and past approaches to meeting the needs of people with psychiatric disabilities, demonstrating how they have been inadequate. Carling then maps out a pioneering paradigm for community integration, which consists of an active partnership among mental health professionals, community leaders, policy makers, families, neighbors, employers, and realtors. Describing ways to prepare the community to organize for change, the book discusses the need to first address the pervasive nature of stigma, which is reflected at every level of society.

Drawing from his own extensive experience, as well as from firsthand observations of model programs in place throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, the author offers detailed guidance for organizing a program of action in mental health systems and in local communities.

About this title

About the Author

Paul J. Carling, PhD, formerly director of the Center for Community Change at Trinity College of Vermont, is currently on the faculty of the Program in Community Mental Health at Southern New Hampshire University. He is Senior Consultant of the Centre for Community Change International.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction
I. Redefining the Needs of Mental Health Consumers
1. Community Integration: The Challenge to Traditional Mental Health Services
2. Foundations for a New Approach
3. Mental Health Consumers and the Consumer Self-Help Movement
II. Organizing for Community Change
4. Preparing for Organizing
5. Strategies for Change
III. Achieving Community Integration
6. Revamping Established Support Systems: Mental Heatlh Systems and Higher Education
7. Improving Access to, Preserving, and Developing Housing
8. Creating Employment Opportunities
9. Promoting Social Integration
IV. Empowering Consumers and Their Families
10. Sharing Power with Consumers
11. Involving Families as Partners in the Process of Change
Conclusion: Future Challenges and New Directions

Edition details

• Publisher: The Guilford Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0898623235
• ISBN 13: 9780898623239
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 348