Main description:

This book is an ambitious project uniting various fields in a multidisciplinary venture drawing on academics and clinicians from medicine, psychology and educational sciences. The interdisciplinary approach has assembled medical, educational and health specialists - many of whom are a rare assemble of outstanding academics and clinicians - with scholarly contributions from many different countries and institutes. It provides a plethora of essays and reviews by clinicians and academics, many contributions self-confessional, disclosing details of their own personal pain and suffering with critical life events including either physical or psychological illnesses, and a description of their own resources and strengths. There are also chapters provided by academics with creative and novel ideas drawing on insight derived from literature, arts and psychology as well as medicine, creating models for encouraging personal development coping despite adversity and eventually finding meaning towards recovery both physically and psychologically. This process of recovery frequently required the support of trusted families and friends, teachers, and fellow physicians and psychologists, enabling them to pursue interesting and outstanding careers "despite" these apparent disadvantages. The authors are all very reflective, providing good advice for young practitioners and "afflicted" alike. The distinguished contributors show the power of the role of psycho-history and biography in understanding who researchers have been influenced by, and what and why. This book will be useful for practitioners and researchers, but also for laymen and social policy makers. The intended readership thus includes those interested in health psychology, sociology, anthropology, public health and mental health sciences.