Ties That Enable

Community Solidarity for People Living with Serious Mental Health Problems

Teresa L. Scheid, S. Megan Smith

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781978818750
  9781978818767
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978818774
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery
• Index: Psychology

Ties that Enable is written for students, providers, and advocates seeking to understand how best to improve mental health care – be it for themselves, their loved ones, their clients, or for the wider community. The authors integrate their knowledge of mental health care as researchers, teachers, and advocates and rely on the experiences of people living with severe mental health problems to help understand the sources of community solidarity. Communities are the primary source of social solidarity, and given the diversity of communities, solutions to the problems faced by individuals living with severe mental health problems must start with community level initiatives. "Ties that Enable" examines the role of a faith-based community group in providing a sense of place and belonging as well as reinforcing a valued social identity. The authors argue that mental health reform efforts need to move beyond a focus on individual recovery to more complex understandings of the meaning of community care. In addition, mental health care needs to move from a medical model to a social model which sees the roots of mental illness and recovery as lying in society, not the individual. It is our society's inability to provide inclusive supportive environments which restrict the ability of individuals to recover. This book provides insights into how communities and system level reforms can promote justice and the higher ideals we aspire to as a society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Current Impasse over Mental Health Care
• 2. Looking Back: Reflections on the Reality of Community-Based Mental Health Care
• 3. Being a “Right Person”: Social Acceptance in a Faith-Based Program
• 4. Doing the “Best” We Can: Developing Social Relationships and Overcoming Isolation
• 5. Us and Them: Confronting Recovery in the Face of Marginalization
• 6. Going Backward: Are We Doomed to Repeat the Failures of the Past?
• 7. Working toward Community Solidarity and Social Justice
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Authors