Women with Serious Mental Illness

Book excerpt: "The book, Women with Serious Mental Illness: Gender-Sensitive and Recovery-Oriented Care, calls attention to a topic and population that has been overlooked in research and psychotherapy - women with serious mental illnesses (i.e., schizophrenia, severe depression, bipolar disorder, and complex posttraumatic stress disorder). Women with Serious Mental Illness focuses on the history of mistreatment, marginalization, and oppression they have encountered in the general public and within the mental health system. This book provides an overview of recovery-oriented care for women with serious mental illness - a process of seeking hope, empowerment, and self-determination beyond the effects of mental illness. Chapters provide a historical overview of the treatment of women with mental illness, their resilience and recovery experiences, as well as issues pertaining to relationships, work, class, culture, trauma, and sexuality. This book also offers the new model of Gender-Sensitive and Recovery Oriented Care (G-ROC) for working with this group from a gender-sensitive framework. The book is a useful tool for mental health educators and providers, with each chapter containing case studies, clinical strategies lists, discussion questions, experiential activities, diagrams, and worksheets that can be completed with clients, students, and peers"--