Mental Illness by Joan Busfield - 9780745649054

Mental IllnessAuthor(s): Joan Busfield\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Polity Press\nISBN-13: 9780745649054, 978-0745649054\nSynopsis\nMental illness is a highly controversial and contested field, informed by the ideas and research of academics and practitioners working in psychiatry, psychology, pharmacology, sociology, genetics and the neurosciences. This book brings clarity to a complex field, exploring core issues ranging from debates about the way the concept has been developed and expanded over time to controversies over the causes of mental illness. The author evaluates critiques of the concept of mental illness and of the way its expanding boundaries now define a far wider range of mental states, experiences and activities as pathological. Arguing that these boundaries need to be restricted, the author contends that many of the phenomena identified as mental illness are normal reactions to life's difficulties and that, while in.