Cognitive Analytic Therapy and the Politics of Mental Health - Softcover

'This is a challenging book which should not be ignored. Its authors attempt to ensure that Cognitive Analytic Therapy stays true to its principles of inclusivity and equality and of seeing a person within their social as well as their emotional reality. They also combine to utter a clarion call to society in general, as it struggles with the consequences of neoliberal ideology. They reject complacency and blind acceptance of the status quo and face, head-on, important issues and prejudices which we, and by implication, all practitioners of psychotherapy, too readily avoid.'

Annalee Curran, UKCP registered CAT therapist, supervisor and trainer. Founder Member and first Chairperson of ACAT and now a Life Member.

Cognitive Analytic Therapy and the Politics of Mental Health provides an overview of the development of cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), and illuminates how the political context affects the way in which therapists consider their work and facilitates their practice.

This book examines how CAT contributes to wider debates over ‘the politics of mental health’. With contributions from those working in services –  including adult mental health, learning disabilities and child and adolescent therapists – the writers consider how contemporary politics devolves responsibility for mental illness onto those suffering distress. The evolving political and social attitudes clients bring to therapy are also addressed in several chapters, and there is a focus on groups in society who have been marginalized and neglected in mental and physical health services.

Cognitive Analytic Therapy and the Politics of Mental Health offers a fresh understanding of the contemporary politics of mental health that will be of interest to all therapists and mental health professionals.