ABSTRACT
There are already many theories of causation of mental distress and it is difficult to see how any additional theoretical perspective could truly add anything to our understanding of mental distress, mental health or mental health care. Indeed, one of the most striking features of the history of mental health care is the way in which various writers, who claim to have developed new therapeutic interventions, seem to have in fact rediscovered older perspectives which have either fallen into relative obscurity as intellectual fashions have changed or have always been relatively unknown. For example, the milieu therapy and social therapy advocated by some psychiatrists during the 1950s and 1960s bears some resemblance to the ideals (if not the reality) of eighteenth and nineteenth century ‘moral treatment’. Similarly, the ethos of Fred Newman’s East Side Institute for Short-Term Psychotherapy has some resonance with the philosophies of some of the less psychoanalytically orientated therapeutic communities (see Kennard, 1998). To misquote a catchphrase from a cult television programme, the truth is already out there. The challenge for mental health professionals is to get beyond dogmatic adherence to any one particular theory on the one hand, and haphazard eclecticism on the other, so that they might discover it. In the previous chapter we suggested a framework of theoretical guidelines which may be applied to any combination of theories to aid constructive critical consideration of issues pertinent to mental health, mental distress and mental health care. In this final chapter, we set out the implications which we believe such a theoretical approach has for practice.
