Where to from here?

Now that we are coming to the end of this book, it is time for us to think about where our discussion up to this point takes us in terms of practical and theoretical implications. Of course, the theoretical and the applied fields are, or at least should be, closely related in that our practical approaches to madness – in research, clinical work, and in training, for example – should be informed by our theoretical models, which, in turn, should be responsive to what we find when we listen to and work with those who have experienced madness. So far in this book we have looked at a number of topics, including a selection of the wide range of theories and explanations we find for the experience of madness, from the individual’s way of making sense of their own experience to the scientific theories held by researchers and clinicians. We have – we acknowledge – paid greater attention to what those who have subjective experience of psychosis make of the experience, and in discussing this, we clearly gave extra emphasis to our own research in this area. We have also looked at some issues which we think help us understand this great diversity of opinion (and research) about psychosis: we explained that we find the concept of ‘storytelling’ a helpful one when we look at the diverse range of stories we encounter when we look at how various parties make sense of madness. In Chapter 6, we outlined our response to the situation we find ourselves confronted with when we look into the literature on schizophrenia; we suggested that thinking of schizophrenia (or psychosis or madness) as an ‘essentially contested concept’ might give us a way of understanding and appreciating the assorted opinions we encounter when we look into madness, and so prevent us from feeling completely overwhelmed and baffled by the mind-boggling range of theories we come across as we explore this area.