Synopses & Reviews
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 provides a calm and authoritative guide to the full range of specific mental illnesses and available treatments. It deals with particular patterns of illness in women, children, and the elderly. It stresses the value of partnership among psychiatrists, patients, and their families. And it places this knowledge within the framework of modern psychiatry-from the history of the profession to just what it is that psychiatrists and fellow health-workers do, and how they can help.
A sense of hope and optimism prevails within these pages. The authors, both eminent psychiatrists with long practical experience, stress that great strides are being made in the treatment of mental illness. But they also warn against the lure of the instant cure. Acknowledging the complexity of human nature, they weave the stories of real people and the insights of many writers throughout their text.
Balanced, up-to-date, thoroughly readable, and humanistic, this book will both increase our practical knowledge and deepen our understanding of mental illness.
Review
“This book introduces readers to these faiths, utilizing the best of both worlds: the NRMs get to express themselves in the words of their own hallowed texts, while the religious scholars Daschke and Ashcraft place these new and interesting belief systems in their proper historical and theosophical context.”
-New York Spirit,
Review
“New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader is an essential text for courses on new religions. It combines well selected source materials with knowledgeable and accessible introductions. The appendix containing an essay by Douglas Cowan on the history of anticult and countercult movements is a very helpful addition.”
-Catherine Wessinger,Co-general Editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions.
Review
“Overall, this scholarly, succinct work offers a balanced approach to a contentious topic. Public and academic libraries should purchase two copies, one for reference and one for circulating collections.”
-Library Journal,
Review
“New religious movements have been in the public eye for decades, and have been the focus of a great deal of debate. Now, at long last, they get to speak for themselves. Dereck Daschke and W. Michael Ashcraft have given us an outstanding resource for understanding new religions, one useful to scholars and students as well as the inquisitive general public. The selections are excellent, and the introductions are models of clarity and accuracy. this volume of primary materials is overdue and very welcome.”
-Timothy Miller,University of Kansas
Synopsis
This book provides a guide to the full range of specific mental illnesses and available treatments, dealing with particular patterns of illness in women, children, and the elderly.
Synopsis
New Religious Movements is a highly unique volume, bringing together primary documents conveying the words and ideas of a wide array of new religious movements (NRMs), and offering a first-hand look into their belief systems.
Arranged by the editors according to a new typology, the text allows readers to consider NRMS along five interrelated pathways—from those that offer new perceptions of existence or new personal identities, to those that center on relationships within family-like units, to those movements that highlight the need for recasting the social order or anticipate the dawn of a new age.
The volume includes original documents from groups such as the Unification Church, Theosophy, Branch Davidians, Wicca, Jehovahs Witnesses, Santeria, and Seventh Day Adventists, as well as many others. Each section is prefaced by a contextual introduction and concludes with a list of sources for further reading. New Religious Movements offers a rare inside look into the worldviews of alternative religious traditions.
About the Author
Sidney Bloch is Associate Professor and Reader in Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and Senior Psychiatrist at St Vincent's Hospital. He is the author of numerous books dealing with psychotherapy, ethics, and the family.
Bruce S. Singh is 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.