School of Population HealthCentre for Health and Society


Books

Baer_website   Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action

By Merrill Singer and Hans Baer

Published by Altamira Press
This new text provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical anthropology. It is structured around three unifying themes. First, medical anthropology is actively engaged in helping to address pressing health problems around the world through research, intervention, and policy-related initiatives. Second, illness and disease cannot be fully understood or effectively addressed by treating them solely as biological in nature; rather, health problems involve complex biosocial processes and resolving them requires attention to a range of factors, including systems of belief, structures of social relationships, and environmental conditions. Third, through an examination of health inequalities on one hand, and environmental degradation and environment-related illness on the other, the authors emphasize the need for a comprehensive medical anthropology that integrates biological, cultural, and social factors in order to understand the origin of ill health and to contribute to more effective and equitable health care systems.

 


TRACHOMA

TRACHOMA: A Blinding Scourge from the Bronze Age to the Twenty-First Century

By Hugh R Taylor

Hugh Taylor presents a fascinating and comprehensive review of Trachoma, from ancient times through to the present. He includes predictions and recommendations for its elimination. Trachoma, has been targeted by the World Health Organization (WHO) for elimination by 2020 and currently affects 84 million children in 56 countries and blinds 1.5 million adults. This seminal and highly readable work will be invaluable for anyone who is interested in trachoma, but will also appeal to those interested in the interface of public health and development, the history of medicine or health care development.

Click here to Download Flyer and Order Form. [PDF 1.21MB]



Bills_Book__Cover   Aboriginal Healthworkers: Primary Health Care at the Margins
By Bill Genat
Published by the University of Western Australia Press

Written in collaboration with a group of Aboriginal healthworkers in WA, Bill Genat’s book documents the day-to-day practice of Aboriginal healthworkers.

The book looks at the unique way in which healthworkers bring health care to the Aboriginal community and describes how, almost every day as they visit clients in their homes, AHWs face the consequences of history—the exclusion, cultural oppression and racism that still undermine the health of Aboriginal people.

It also describes how often healthworkers find themselves responding to clients caught up in personal and family problems, often related to housing and lack of income, that demand immediate responses and shift their own and the client’s attention away from clinical health management. There are also detailed accounts of how, despite a serious lack of professional recognition and support, AHWs respond to their important work and have developed their own unique, Indigenous healing practice.

The book is published by the University of Western Australia Press.

 


Carpentaria   Carpentaria
By Alexis Wright
Published by Giramondo Publishing Company

Carpentaria, an epic story set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland. The novel was launched at the Brisbane Writers Festival by Murrandoo Yanner and Jacqui Katona and in Melbourne at the Brunswick Street Bookstore by Tony Birch, Gary Foley and Alison Ravenscroft.

There were large gatherings at both events to listen to the speeches made by our Indigenous leaders who sent this fine novel off in style on its journey throughout the world. Carpentaria is available in all good bookshops or from the publisher, Giramondo Publishing Company.

 


IP_Comm_Telling_Moments   Telling Moments
Everyday Ethics in Health Care
By Marilys Guillemin and Lynn Gillam, Centre for Health and Society, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne
Published by IP Communications

Telling Moments explores ethical practice across the range of health care disciplines. It focuses not only on ethical analysis and decision-making, but also on the more subtle, and often more important art of ‘ethical mindfulness’.

The book presents five very personal stories of health care practice, and engages in depth with each of them. Through these stories, readers are introduced to a narrative approach to health ethics that first acknowledges everyday ethics in health care as significant. The approach combines conventional bioethics principles, sociology, and narrative analysis to understand what is ethically at stake in these stories, and provide a way of engaging with the stories. The aim is to promote ethical mindfulness and enhance ethical practice in health care, in ways that are informed not just by abstract ethical principles but by real life events.

 


An_Introduction_to_the_Psychotherapies   An Introduction to the Psychotherapies
Fourth Edition
Edited by Sidney Bloch, Department of Psychiatry, St Vincent's Hospital, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Published by IP Communications ?

Psychotherapy is a nebulous term with widely different connotations. Anyone embarking on training in psychotherapy will find themselves faced with a bewildering range of possible therapies from which to choose. Which treatments are effective? What theories underlie a particular treatment method? What techniques are used in a particular treatment? In what circumstances is a particular treatment appropriate? In what circumstances is it inappropriate?

In the past thirty years, Sidney Bloch's Introduction to the Psychotherapies has established itself as the leading introductory text to the field. In short, accessible chapters by leading practitioners, it outlines the leading therapies, noting for each one the definitions, aims, assessment, and practice, coupled with the essential references.  For the 4th edition, the chapters have been extensively revised and updated, taking into account the developments in the 10 years since publication of the 3rd edition.  Chapters have been added on research in psychotherapy, cognitive-analytic psychotherapy, the conversational model and psychotherapy with older adults and on a rather different note, a chapter setting the psychotherapies in an historical context.

This book will remain the core text for undergraduate students in psychology, who are considering training in clinical psychology, along with anyone in the fields of mental health and general medicine looking for an accessible overview of this huge and often confusing field.

 


An_Anthology_of_Psychiatric_Ethics   An Anthology of Psychiatric Ethics
Stephen A. Green, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington DC, USA, and Sidney Bloch, Professor of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor, Centre for Health and Society, University of Melbourne, Australia
Published by IP Communications ?

For over two decades, Bloch, Green and Chodoff's Psychiatric Ethics has been the leading text on ethical issues in psychiatry and mental health. This Anthology of Psychiatric Ethics will serve as an invaluable companion volume, providing ready access to foundational writings concerning the ethical practice of psychiatry, previously published articles and excerpts of book chapters selected on the basis of their significance to psychiatric ethics.

It is structured in nine sections: Philosophical Underpinnings; The Therapeutic Relationship and Social Context; Psychiatric Diagnosis; Confidentiality; Psychiatric Treatment and Services; Special Populations; Forensic Psychiatry; Resource Allocation; and Research.  Each chapter is prefaced with an essay that presents an introductory overview designed to help guide the reader through the topic and the individual readings. Each chapter contains between six and twelve selected readings, and is extensively referenced for further investigation of the individual study areas.

 

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