Healing the Mind Through the Power of Story

Within a narrative psychiatry model of mental illness, people are not defective, requiring drugs to "fix" them. What needs "fixing" are the ineffective stories people have internalized and succumbed to about how they should live in the world.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D., Ph.D., is certified in psychiatry, family practice, and geriatrics and worked for years in rural emergency medicine. He is the author of several books, including the bestselling Coyote Medicine, is a professor of family medicine at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine and of psychology at Argosy University, and lectures around the world.

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction: There’s Nothing But Story

Part I
History and Foundations

1    Conventional Mental Health Today
2    Good Stories and Mental Health
3    How Do We Learn to Be Who We Are?
4    How Do We Learn to Feel What We Feel?
5    The Meaning of Pain and Depression
6    Story and the Shaping of Identity

Part II
Science and Mind

7    How Culture Changes Biology and Genetics
8    How Culture Is Context and Context Shapes Behavior
9    Stories from Science: Change Is Always Possible

Part III
The Practice of Narrative Psychiatry

10    The Power of Ceremony
11    How Communities Create Change
12    To Story or Not to Story
13    Indigenous Models for the Practice of Psychiatry and Mental Health

Part IV
Examples of Narrative Psychiatry in Action

14    Narratives for Anxiety and Depression
15    Narratives and Bipolar Disorder
16    Narrative Approaches to Psychosis

Notes

About the Author

Index