Psychiatry/Medicine and Health
Book Details

Understanding Troubled Minds

A Guide to Mental Illness and its Treatment

Sidney Bloch and Bruce S. Singh

A sympathetic guide to mental illness and its treatment for sufferers and their families.

Opinion

‘The book I’ve been waiting for! A clear and invaluable account of mental illness in all its manifestations, set in an absorbing historical and social context. The authors reveal a warm appreciation of the vagaries of human nature.’
Anne Deveson, Journalist, broadcaster and author of Tell Me I’m Here

‘. . . this is a fine book. It can be read with profit by anyone with an interest in such matters, especially family members of those affected by troubled minds, and it certainly could prove helpful to the affected themselves. Congratulations to the authors. Buy it.’
—Richard Ball, Chiron, 1998

About this Title

Most of us take our mental health for granted. But when confronted by mental illness in our family, our friends or ourselves, even the most competent among us is likely to become bewildered.

Understanding Troubled Minds guides us calmly and authoritatively through the full range of mental illnesses and available treatments. It deals with particular patterns of illness in women, children and the elderly. Stressing the value of partnership between psychiatrists, patients and their families, it tells us just what it is that psychiatrists and fellow health-workers do.

A sense of hope and optimism prevails. The authors, both eminent academic psychiatrists of long practical experience, emphasise that great strides are being made in the treatment of mental illness. Woven through their text, in acknowledgement of the complexity of human nature, are stories of real people.

This balanced, up-to-date book is warm-hearted and thoroughly readable. It will increase both our practical knowledge and our deeper understanding of mental illness.

About the Author

Sidney Bloch is Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and Honorary Senior Psychiatrist at St Vincent’s Hospital. He edited the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry from 1992-2004, and his thirteen books deal with psychotherapies, psychiatry ethics and the family.

Bruce Singh is the Deputy Dean of Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Science and formerly Cato Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, and Clinical Director of Psychiatry of the Western Health Care Network, Melbourne. He has made a major contribution to mental health policy in Australia.

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978-0-522-84642-3