Main description:

Draws on 18 months of the author's fieldwork.
Demonstrates how service users can work creatively with the clinical circuitries, biomedical imaginaries and temporal underpinnings of clozapine treatment to personalise their experiences and to exert subtle personal power over their health and future prospects.
The first ethnography to examine clozapine treatment in the UK and Australia.

Contents:

Foreword; Preface; Introduction; Part 1: Health Agency 1. A universal experience? 2. A framework for understanding health agency; Part 1 conclusion; Part 2: Blood work; 3. Clinic circuitries 4. Anxiety reconstituted 5. Flexible care 6. "The brain can't live alone" 7. Coagulation and flow 8. Social contact at a negotiable distance 9. Moral agency; Part 2 conclusion; Part 3: Embracing uncertainty; 10. A therapeutic dose 11. Mind-body-other 12. Complementary consumptions 13. Attending to the body and interpreting symptoms 14. Health system failures: "Morecould be done" 15. "Everyone's different" Part 3 conclusion; Part 4: Finding rhythm; freeing oneself; 16. Clozapine frames 17. Doing things; finding focus - alone and together 18. Wanting more: Security; order; and "the knock-on effect" 19. Pursuing mindfulness 20. Experiencing 'flow' and evading clinical concerns Part 4 conclusion; Conclusive reflections; Acknowledgements; Appendix I: Participant portraits; Apendix II: Table of clozapine client demographics; References