Mental Health and Social Space
Towards Inclusionary Geographies?
RGS-IBG Book Series
January 2008
224 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Through a series of case studies this book brings to the fore the voices, lives, and capacities of people with mental health problems as well as the difficulties they face. It effectively demonstrates the ways people with mental health problems are active in re-scripting versions of social recovery through their use of very different community spaces.
* * Offers a 'hopeful epistemology' not typically found in mental health-related research
* Interrogates neo-liberal dogma that defines people with mental health problems as active social citizens wholly responsible for their own recoveries and acceptance
* Brings to the fore the voices of, lives, capacities and difficulties facing people with mental health problems
* Imaginatively differentiates rural, urban, interest and technological communities, disrupting familiar and conventional accounts of social inclusion and 'the local'
* Demonstrates how people with mental health problems are active in re-scripting their own social recoveries through their use and understanding of different social spaces
Series editors' preface.
Preface and acknowledgements.
1 Geographies of difference: understanding mental (ill) health
and social space.
2 Placing mental health: community, inclusion and
citizenship.
3 Cultural landscapes: rural communities and mental health.
4 Therapeutic natures? urban gardening, citizenship and social
inclusion.
5 Artistic spaces: the arts and mental health.
6 Virtual communities: the Internet and on-line geographies of
self-help.
Conclusion: innovative geographies of mental health.
References.
Index.
engagement with the practiced geographies of mental health. In
particular it seeks to extend our grasp of how individuals with
mental health problems feel; how they relate to community,
citizenship and how they contribute to the constitution of their
social spaces". (Area Book Reviews, 2010)"Hester Parr's book
delivers a welcome and unusually close-up engagement with the
practiced geographies of mental health." (Area, December 2010)
"This inspiring book offers a highly original account of the
social spaces created and inhabited by people with mental health
problems. Hester Parr paints a vivid picture, which foregrounds
hopeful possibilities for empowerment and integration. It will be
invaluable to anyone seeking to understand mental (ill) health in
the twenty-first century."
Liz Bondi, University of Edinburgh
"Parr's efforts to advance a 'cautious
optimism"'about the lived social geographies of people with
mental health problems, based on rich empirical material and
thoughtful conceptual articulation, make this an essential read for
anyone interested in the changing social geographies of mental
health. The book also has considerable relevance for broader
debates about social inclusion and active citizenship in
contemporary Western societies."
Robert Wilton, McMaster University
"Parr has ... redefine[ed] 'the mental
patient', a crucial undertaking if social citizenship for
people with mental illness is to become an enduring reality."
Metapsychology
"This book could appeal to psychologists who enjoy
relevant work in other disciplines, who find ideas of people like
Freud and Foucault interesting, and who value small case
studies." PsycCritiques