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Currently, it is common practice among the child psychiatric establishment to prescribe powerful and potentially addictive drugs to children who have emotional or behavioural problems. Pathological Child Psychiatry and the Medicalization of Childhood is a strong challenge to this way of thinking.
Sami Timimi uses a wide variety of sources that shape our understanding including his personal experiences to highlight the role of culture, beliefs, science, social hierarchy and power, in shaping our understanding of childhood problems and how to deal with them. He urges professionals who work with children to question their assumptions in a manner that will enable them to access a greater variety of potentially helpful therapeutic frameworks.
Since the 1960s, psychiatry has had to learn to accommodate critical analysis of its beliefs and methods. The legitimacy of its core assumptions continues to be questioned. Now child psychiatry too must engage with such a debate, if it wishes to develop into a genuinely democratic and inclusive profession. Pathological Child Psychiatry and the Medicalization of Childhood will be of great interest to professionals and trainees in psychiatry and child psychiatry, social work, family therapy and other psychotherapies for children and adolescents.
List of contents
On Becoming a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist - A Personal Account. The Postmodern Landscape and Children's Mental Health. Science and Faith in Mental Health. Reversing the Form/Content Argument. Mental Health Power Hierarchies. Developing Multi-Perspective Approaches. The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Changing My Practice - Incorporating Cultural Diversity and a Postmodern Perspective. The Future of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
About the author
Sami Timimi is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist who works full time in the NHS in Lincolnshire.
Summary
Uses a wide variety of sources to shape our understanding of childhood problems and how to deal with them, including the role of culture, beliefs, science, social hierarchy and power.
