People and Predicaments / / Milton Mazer.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP e-dition: Complete eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Mazer, Milton,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013]; ©1976
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: Reprint 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (279 p.) :; 2 figures, 2 tables

This is the compelling story of an experiment begun in 1961 that eventually affected the lives of almost all of the residents of the island of Martha's Vineyard. The author writes engagingly of the island and its year-round inhabitants, a community of some seven thousand persons of diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. With sympathy and insight Milton Mazer analyzes the stresses that are peculiar to the conditions of life on the island, and he describes the kinds of psychological disorders that are precipitated by those stresses. He reports, without technical jargon, the results of a five-year study of a great variety of psychosocial predicaments experienced by the people of the island. Finally he examines the catalytic effect the mental health center and its research findings have had on the development of other supportive agencies and how the community established a network of human services to meet its needs. The work clearly demonstrates that striking advances can be made by a mental health program that is informed by an understanding of the community served. The book will stand as a model for future studies in this area.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- TABLES -- FIGURES -- I. The People -- 1. People in Predicament -- 2. The Island and Its People -- 3. The Values of Islanders -- 4. The Stresses of Island Life -- 5. The Resources and Needs of Islanders -- II. The Predicaments -- 6. The Faces of Disorder -- 7. The Study of Disorder -- 8. Psychiatric Disorder in General Practice -- 9. Psychiatric Disorder in Mental Health Practice -- 10. Comparison of Psychiatric and General Practice -- 11. The Prevalence of Human Predicaments -- 12. Parapsychiatric Events and Psychiatric Disorder -- 13. The Multi-Predicament Family -- III. The Services -- 14. Beyond Psychiatry -- 15. The Caretakers Move -- 16. The Human Service Network -- 17. The Functions of the Agencies -- 18. The Common Purpose -- 19. The Therapist in the Community -- 20. The Human Uses of the Community -- Appendices Bibliography Index -- Appendices -- Bibliography -- Index