Search results for ""Author Dr Gwen Adshead""

As a psychodynamic theory of both normal development and psychopathology, attachment theory has particular utility for forensic psychiatry. A Matter of Security provides an attachment theory based account of the development of arousal and affect regulation, which offers a new way of thinking about mental disorders in offenders. This book also discusses the development of personality in terms of interpersonal functioning and relationships with others, which is essential to understanding both interpersonal violence and abnormal personality development. Attachment theory also offers a model of therapeutic work with patients that have particular resonance with forensic work because it uses the language of security. This collection focuses on attachment theory applied to forensic psychiatry and psychotherapy.

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Personality Disorder offers a comprehensive and accessible collection of papers that will be practically useful to practitioners working in secure and non-secure settings with patients who have personality disorders.This book brings together fourteen classic papers, which address the impact that working with personality disorder patients can have on staff. It also offers theoretical explanations for personality disorder, and explores other issues such as the concept of boundaries in clinical practice, psychiatric staff as attachment figures and the relationship between severity of personality disorder and childhood experiences. Each paper is introduced with contextual material, and is followed by a series of questions that are intended to be used as educational exercises.This book will be essential reading for clinical and forensic psychologists, psychiatrists, community psychiatric nurses, social workers and students.

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This groundbreaking book explores the psychodynamics and socio-politics of the forensic therapeutic milieu, addressing some of the most difficult and complex issues facing practitioners. It sets out a psycho-social framework for understanding the predicament and the needs of those who live in and those who work in forensic mental health settings. It brings to life the thinking of those working on the frontline in an increasingly difficult and hostile environment, and draws together fresh and stimulating approaches to engagement with highly complex individuals who present challenges to traditional models of psychiatric assessment and treatment.Contributors with considerable clinical experience and expertise from a range of disciplines consider the ethical, emotional and intellectual challenges of their work, and describe ways in which genuine containment and change can be achieved despite numerous perceived assaults on therapeutic relationships, and on the therapeutic milieu itself. Combining clinical case studies with organisational perspectives and clear descriptions of theoretical processes, they explore key issues including the challenges of maintaining role-appropriate, 'boundaried' relationships; the tensions between public protection and individual confidentiality; questions of risk and responsibility; duty of care and respect for individual liberty; the challenges posed by inter-professional tensions and rivalries; as well as specific clinical dilemmas. The difficulties they experience in fulfilling specific therapeutic roles in the face of uncertainties about the funding and commissioning of their services are addressed, and the final part of the book outlines some of the ways in which individuals, particular services and whole organisations may protect themselves when under attack.This unique and highly original book is essential reading for all those working, or training to work, in both forensic and non-forensic inpatient therapeutic milieux and for academics and lay readers interested in the societal dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that are replicated and magnified in these settings.

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People who use forensic mental health services are defined by the fact that they have violated boundaries, often in many ways. For clinicians employed to work therapeutically with this client group however, the capacity to initiate and maintain boundaries is critical to safety as well as to good treatment outcomes. This book provides a thorough introduction to the subject of professional and therapeutic boundaries and their particular complexities within forensic mental health settings. The contributors, all experts in their respective fields, address the challenges of establishing working boundaries within forensic mental health services from multiple perspectives. They explore the ways in which boundaries can be initiated and maintained in different areas of forensic mental health work, including in psychotherapy, mental health nursing, arts therapies, forensic psychiatry and family therapy, and when working with different client groups, including children and adolescents, offenders with severe personality disorders in high security settings and sex offenders. Consideration is also given to boundaries and homicide, maternal boundary violations and boundaries in a forensic learning disability service.This authoritative, interdisciplinary resource will support all forensic mental health practitioners in this crucial aspect of their work.

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This Second Edition of Forensic Psychiatry covers the clinical, legal, and ethical issues for the treatment of mentally disordered offenders for all of the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland jurisdictions. Written by an expert interdisciplinary team from the fields of both law and psychiatry, this is a comprehensive and up-to-date guide which includes clinical observations, guidance, and ethical advice across the psychiatric discipline. The title has been updated with expanded topics on developmental disorders, neuroscience and its use in legal settings, human rights law, dementia, and traumatic brain injury. New legal cases have also been incorporated to reflect changes in legislation, including but not limited to diminished responsibility, deprivation of liberty, and automatism. There are also new parts on forensic psychotherapy, cross-cultural diagnostic validity, and radicalisation. Alongside practical advice on managing clinical and legal situations, the handbook provides concise examples, summaries of relevant legislation, and introductions to different ethical approaches and clinical observations. Uniquely focusing on the interface between psychiatry and law, this title is essential reading for the forensic psychiatrist, as well as lawyers and judges.

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Designed as a companion to the Forensic Psychiatry (Oxford Specialist Handbook), Second Edition, this new casebook complements the domains of both theory and practice put forward in the handbook, but also works as a standalone volume for those who wishes to enhance their decision making in cases they may confront in their discipline. Organised into three sections, the casebook allows the practitioner to think through not only the technical medical aspects of real-life clinical cases, but also the legal and ethical aspects. Part A provides an introduction to the theory and practice of decision-making; Part B presents cases across clinical, legal, and ethical domains; and Part C offers frameworks for critiquing decisions. This robustly discursive approach to a fact-based but also value-laden discipline enhances the opportunity to put knowledge into practice. The Oxford Casebook of Forensic Psychiatry expresses the concept that 'knowing is the only part of deciding', offering an essential practitioner's guide to decision making in clinical, forensic, and legal psychiatry.

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