Mental Health and Social Space - (Rgs-Ibg Book) by Hester Parr (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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

From the Back Cover

In the nineteenth century, 'the mad' were segregated in special asylum spaces; in the later twentieth century, these spaces were dismantled and patients discharged into the community. Now, in the twenty-first century, 'community care' is still in vogue, but what has happened to the people with mental health problems? Stories of neglect, ghettoization, homicide, and reinstitutionalization regularly litter the pages of newspapers and academic journals. Is this the whole story? Are those with severe and enduring mental health problems still living on the edges of society?

This book illuminates the complicated reality of people living with mental health problems. It focuses on their voices, relationships, and achievements through case studies tracing innovative examples of community activity that are creating versions of social tolerance, social recovery, and peer and self-help for this consistently marginalized group. People with mental health problems are active in rescripting their own social recoveries, using different community spaces to create pathways to psychological and social stability.

Review Quotes

"Hester Parr's book delivers a welcome and unusually close-up 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

About the Author

Hester Parr is Reader in Human Geography at the University of Dundee. She has worked on questions of mental health for over ten years, publishing in a range of journals, including Society and Space, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Area, Health and Place and Social and Cultural Geography.