When madness is intolerable for sufferers, how do
professional carers remain sane? Psychiatric
institutions have always been places of fear and awe.
Madness impacts on family, friends and relatives, but
also those who provide a caring environment, whether in
large institutions of the past, or community care in the
present. This book explores the effects of the psychotic
patient's suffering on carers and the culture of
psychiatric services. Suffering Insanity is
arranged as three essays. The first concerns staff
stress in psychiatric services, exploring how the impact
of madness demands a personal resilience as well as
careful professional support, which may not be
forthcoming. The second essay attempts a systematic
review of the nature of psychosis and the intolerable
psychotic experience, which the patient attempts to
evade, and which the carer must confront in the course
of daily work. The third essay returns to the impact of
psychosis on the psychiatric services, which frequently
configure in ways which can have serious and harmful
effects on the provision of care. In particular, service
may succumb to an unfortunate schismatic process
resulting in sterile conflict, and to an assertively
scientific culture, which leads to an unwitting
depersonalisation of patients. Suffering
Insanity makes a powerful argument for considering
care in the psychiatric services as a whole system that
includes staff as well as patients; all need attention
and understanding in order to deliver care in as humane
a way as possible. All those working in the psychiatric
services, both in large and small agencies and
institutions, will appreciate that closer examination of
the actual psychology and interrelations of staff, as
well as patients, is essential and urgent.
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