ABSTRACT
The seventeenth and final chapter of the guide to Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERIT) discusses the origins of MERIT. These include works of fiction as well as standard psychotherapy and other texts concerned with serious mental illness. MERIT is linked to work by authors often seen as unrelated to, even at odds with, each other, including Harold Searles, R. D. Laing, Mikhail Bakhtin, Fredrick Nietzsche, and George Kelly. Turning to the present, the empirical basis for MERIT is then presented and includes rich case reports, several open trials, randomized controlled trials, and qualitative studies, all of which suggest MERIT is acceptable to patients with SMI and may lead to individualized recovery-oriented gains. Finally future directions are discussed.
