Common Mental Disorders

Combining insights from social psychiatry with recent findings in biological psychiatry, this book provides a new model for common mental disorders. The authors, one a physician, the other trained in the social sciences, survey a wide field to describe the physical basis of common mental disorders and the way in which events in an individual's life can bring about an episode of mental disorder. This is one of the first models to give equal emphasis in determining susceptibility to mental disorder to social and psychological events on the one hand, and to factors affecting physical health on the other. David Goldberg and Peter Huxley expand and develop their earlier book, "Mental Illness in the Community" , (Routledge 1980), to define three important components: "vulnerability" - factors which make some individuals more susceptible than others to episodes of mental disorder; "destabilisation" - the process of beginning to experience symptoms; and, "restitution" - factors which determine how long an episode of illness will last in a particular individual. They describe the physical processes which underlie states of depression and anxiety.;This book should be of interest to professionals and students in psychiatry, psychiatric nursing and social work.