ABSTRACT

Narrative Psychiatry and Family Collaborations is about helping families with complex psychiatric problems by seeing and meeting the families and the family members, as the best versions of themselves, before we see and address the diagnoses.

This book draws on ten years of clinical research and contains stories about helping people, who are heavily burdened with psychiatric illnesses, to find ways to live a life as close as possible to their dreams. The chapters are organized according to ideas, values, and techniques. The book describes family-oriented practices, narrative collaborative practices, narrative psychiatric practices, and narrative agency practices. It also talks about wonderfulness interviewing, mattering practices, public note taking on paper charts, therapeutic letter writing, diagnoses as externalized problems, narrative medicine, and family community meetings. Each chapter includes case studies that illustrate the theory, ethics, and practice, told by Nina Jørring in collaboration with the families and colleagues.

The book will be of interest to child and adolescent psychiatrists and all other mental health professionals working with children and families.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|13 pages

A narrative family psychiatrist

chapter 2|12 pages

Collaborative family therapy

chapter 3|13 pages

I am not the problem! We are the heroes!

chapter 4|12 pages

Mattering is at the heart of the matter

chapter 6|13 pages

The helping map as a guiding light

chapter 7|13 pages

Therapeutic letter writing

chapter 10|13 pages

Me, the medicine, and my diagnosis

chapter 11|13 pages

Developing and co-creating shared wisdom

chapter 12|12 pages

Empowering the entire family

chapter 13|11 pages

Family community meetings that matter

chapter 15|13 pages

A continuously curious learning team

chapter 16|12 pages

The art of true helping: dare to care

chapter |8 pages

Afterword

chapter |5 pages

Addendum