Beyond the Risk Paradigm in Mental Health Policy and Practice

Modern society is increasingly preoccupied with fears for the future and the idea of preventing ‘the worst’. The result is a focus on attempting to calculate the probabilities of adverse events occurring – in other words, on measuring risk. Since the 1990s, the idea of risk has come to dominate policy and practice in mental health across the USA, Australasia, and Europe.

In this timely text, a group of international experts examines the ways in which the narrow focus on specific kinds of risk, such as violence towards others, perpetuates the social disadvantages experienced by mental health service users. At the same time, it ignores the vast array of risks experienced by the service users themselves. Benefitting from the authors’ extensive practice experience, the book considers how the dominance of the risk paradigm generates dilemmas for mental health organisations, as well as within leadership and direct practice roles. It offers practical resolutions to these dilemmas that both satisfy professional ethics and improve the experience of the service user.

Combining examination of key theories and concepts with insights from front line practice, this latest addition to Palgrave’s Beyond the Risk Paradigm series provides an important new dimension to debates on mental health provision.