The subject matter of mental illness has fascinated artists and writers for centuries. Filmmakers have responded in diverse and innovative ways to the artistic challenge of portraying mental illness. In this thesis, I focus on the representations of mental illness in six recent films from Australia and New Zealand: Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989), An Angel at My Table (Campion, 1990), Bad Boy Bubby (Rolf de Heer, 1993), Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994), Angel Baby (Michael Rymer, 1995) and Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996). In each film, the protagonist is diagnosed, or treated by others, as mentally ill. Mental illness is portrayed as an affliction which the protagonist struggles to overcome. I argue that these films cultivate a relationship of empathy between the mentally ill character and the spectator. Whereas the related emotion of sympathy involves feeling sorry for someone, empathy involves feeling with that person; in other words, rather than feel for these mentally ill characters, we are invited to feel like they do. (For complete abstract open document)

This critical hermeneutic study explored what it is like to re-enter the workforce following long-term forensic hospitalisation. An in-depth analysis of the phenomenon was completed, with the aim of evoking insights and developing understandings about the lived return-to-work experience. As this research was situated within the critical paradigm, the process of seeking, securing and sustaining employment was viewed in terms of power relationships, and through the multiple positionings of psychiatric disability, employment status and social capital.An unstructured interview process was used to explore the return-to-work experiences of eight purposefully selected informants with a history of mental illness and prior illness-related offending. They were living in the community and had returned to part or full-time employment, which they had sustained for at least six months. The gathered data was interpreted using hermeneutic analysis. This process revealed a number of themes, which were clustered into related groups, under eleven essential overarching themes. Freire's (1972) critical social theory was used to add critical depth to the findings.The findings reveal that returning to work exposes people who are affected by mental illness to an array of challenges and personal opportunities. People who have a forensic psychiatric history can encounter complex employment barriers related to stigma and misunderstanding. Therefore, the selected critical hermeneutic design provided a congruent framework with which to view the informants' quest to seek, secure and sustain employment. Despite significant obstacles, securing employment provides opportunities for individuals to test their skills while engaged in meaningful work activity. The acquisition of work skills can result in individuals' experiencing a strong sense of self-satisfaction. The experience of being bolstered by personal accomplishment often co-exists with, but is not necessarily negated by, difficulties that arise on-the-job.As there is scant reference to forensic rehabilitation within the mental health vocational literature, this study may be a timely contribution. It may also be used to add depth to the knowledge base within the field of mental health rehabilitation, in particular the specialised areas of forensic rehabilitation and vocational practise. Therefore, it may be a positive precursor to further discussion and analysis regarding work and education outcomes from the unique forensic psychiatric perspective.

It is suggested that the lack of progress made towards understanding and preventing, or even in many cases even alleviating, psychological suffering has been due, in large part, to the way in which such suffering is conceptualised – as ‘disorder’, ‘illness’ or ‘disease’ which is located, and is thus potentially locatable, within the individual. This conceptualisation of psychological suffering is referred to in this thesis as the ‘Dysfunctional Mind Account’ (DMA). The DMA, it is argued, underlies all accepted models/theories of psychological suffering and is the dominant way of conceptualising such suffering for both professionals and lay-people in Western cultures. It is further argued that the main reason the DMA is unable to assist in understanding and alleviating psychological suffering is because it is underpinned by assumptions about human beings and their suffering which are inherently flawed. The account presented in this thesis places at its centre an analysis of persons and their experience that attempts to overthrow these assumptions. The resulting reconceptualisation presents a view of psychological suffering as emergent from our continual personal and embodied enmeshment within our social world, rather than as arising primarily out of the various processes occurring ‘within’ us (whether that be our neurochemistry or our ‘mental mechanisms’ or an ‘interaction’ between them). It is essentially suggested that psychological suffering emerges from the same source as all other aspects of our personal being; from the constant coactions between the various aspects of our being in the world – personal, organismic and molecular – with the environment within which we are enmeshed. This means that the feelings/thoughts/behaviours conceptualised as ‘mental disorder’ are as much part of our personal being as any other aspect of us; they are not ‘other’, they are not ‘disease’, ‘illness’ or ‘dysfunction’. Such feelings/thoughts/ behaviours, it is argued, almost always, perhaps inevitably, represent a very adaptive response, at every level of our being, to environmental contingencies. Thus, when understood in its full context, the suffering conceptualised as ‘mental disorder’ can be seen as the very understandable responses of the embodied person to what is happening to them, rather than ‘un-understandable’ dysfunctions, aberrations and pathological processes of the ‘mind’ (or brain).

[Abstract]: This study explores similarities and differences in the early family history of an adult group with schizophrenia, and a matched group with major depression. Attachment theory, trauma theory and their relation to serious mental illnesses are used to understand the clinical participants’ reported early traumatic experiences of emotional deprivation and neglect.A retrospective design includes self-report questionnaires from clinical participants, and semi-structured interviews with participants’ mothers/primary caregivers.Data analysis includes:1. Assessment of matched participants’ reported prevalence of emotional deprivation and neglect in four different age groups;2. Assessment of themes of early family trauma and sequelae from the mother interviews;3. Qualitative analysis of sample mother/primary caregiver interviews from each diagnostic group of the manner in which the interviewees construct their stories around trauma;4. Quantitative analysis of a conceptualised model representing the arguments developed in the body of this dissertation.The second and third forms of analysis above include a panel of three experts, blind to diagnosis, validating this researcher’s findings.Standard multiple regression analysis indicates participants’ reported neglect across all age groups significantly predicts emotional deprivation, with neglect contributing 27.4% of the variability, but with no individual age band contributing significantly to the equation.Themes from the mother interviews are clustered into three constructs, guided by the research questions and this researcher’s clinical experience, the mothers’ emphases and the expert panel into Early Family Trauma, Maternal Fatigue, and Clinical Participants’ Early Attachment Difficulties.The mothers’ manner of discussing early family trauma is defined via speech markers as dissociative (disorganised, incoherent, and unresolved) or coherent (grounded, sequential and resolved) according to Attachment Theory and the literature on dissociation. Speakers are assigned as using dissociation or not as a categorical variable.A model is conceptualised to represent the interrelatedness of data from the participants and their mothers, including the manner in which the mothers relate early family trauma. Canonical Discriminant Function Analysis indicates that early family trauma and maternal fatigue discriminate little between diagnostic groups and that maternal non-resolution of early traumatic events and (possibly related) participant offspring attachment difficulties contribute most to distinguishing between the two diagnostic groups. Finally, a greater number of participants from the schizophrenia sample than from the depression sample continue to live with mother, possibly indicating that the early attachment difficulties remain unresolved.Discussion offers a reconceptualisation of several major and/or established theories concerning risk factors in schizophrenia, and examines shortcomings in the literature, concluding with suggestions for future research.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-06, page: 2503.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Unviersity of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 1999. / Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-287).

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997. / References and bibliography : p. 308-345.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-106).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 267-300.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1993. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2937. Abstract precedes thesis title page as [2] preliminary leaves. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).