The International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis Book Series

The International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS) comprises a diverse range of individuals, networks and institutional members across more than twenty countries. Central to its ethos is that the perspectives of individuals with lived experience of psychosis, and their families and friends, are key to forging more inclusive understandings of, and collaborative therapeutic approaches to, psychosis.

With a core aim of promoting psychological and social approaches to psychosis, ISPS has a history stretching back more than five decades. During this time it has witnessed the relentless pursuit of primarily biological explanations for psychosis. This tide has been turning in recent years, with growing international recognition of a range of psychological, social, and cultural factors that have considerable explanatory traction and distinct therapeutic possibilities. Policymakers, treatment professionals, people with lived experience of psychosis, and family members are increasingly exploring interventions in which talking and listening are key ingredients. Psychosocially informed understandings and support frameworks are helpful for fostering and promoting personal recovery in the face of adverse psychotic experience. Recognising the humanitarian and therapeutic potential of these perspectives, ISPS embraces a wide spectrum of approaches from psychodynamic, systemic, cognitive, and arts therapies, to need-adapted and dialogical approaches, family and group therapies and residential therapeutic communities.

A further ambition of ISPS is to draw together diverse viewpoints on psychosis and to foster discussion and debate across the biomedical and social sciences, including establishing meaningful dialogue with practitioners and researchers who are more familiar with biological-based approaches. Such discussions are supported by growing evidence of the entanglement of genes and physiology with socio-cultural, environmental, and emotional contexts. This allows a consideration of mental distress as an embodied psycho-social experience that must be understood in relation to a person’s life history and circumstances.

The ISPS book series seeks to capture these developments in the field by providing a forum in which authors with a variety of lived and professional experiences can share the significant value of their work. Complemented by international and national conferences and publication of the journal Psychosis, this series is central to the activities of ISPS and their global reach. It comprises books with a variety of empirical focuses and with differing experiential and disciplinary perspectives. Although diverse, the range of books combines intellectual rigour with accessibility to readers across the ISPS community. We aim for the series to be a resource for mental health professionals, for those developing and implementing policy, for academics in the social and clinical sciences, and for people whose interest in psychosis stems from personal or family experience.

To support its aim of advancing scholarship in an inclusive and interdisciplinary way, the series benefits from the advice of an editorial board whose members are drawn from across the ISPS community:

Katherine Berry; Sandra Bucci; Marc Calmeyn; Caroline Cupitt; Stephanie Ewart; Pamela Fuller; Jim Geekie; Olympia Gianfrancesco; Lee Gunn; Kelley Irmen; Sumeet Jain; Nev Jones; David Kennard; Eleanor Longden; Tanya Luhrmann; Brian Martindale; Andrew Moskowitz; Michael O’Loughlin; Jim van Os; David Shiers.

For more information about ISPS, email isps@isps.org or visit our website, www.isps.org.

For more information about the journal Psychosis visit www.isps.org/index.php/publications/journal