Laying the Ghost: Patients Into Users

This book is about the way in which the idea of madness still haunts people's imagination, and the way in which this is reflected in the experience of those diagnosed as psychiatrically ill. It is also about the difference between the old system of psychiatric containment and the present 'community' approach which deals with 'users of the psychiatric services' - in other words, User Groups - as this is seen from the perspective of those involved in both of these approaches. The result is a book which has much to say about social exclusion and the experience of stigma. It sets out to examine how this important social change, from 'patient' to 'user' affects those most intimately concerned. It puts the 'user' point of view in a positive way, allowing those within the community to speak for themselves. It also has something to say about the similarity which exists between incarceration within an institution and confinement to a special section of society as a whole. Roger Grainger has himself been a psychiatric in-patient and the member of several user groups. He worked for eighteen years as a whole-time Chaplain of a large psychiatric hospital in the North of England, and is now in private practice as a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Senior Practitioner in Psychotherapy. He believes himself to be in a privileged position to write on this subject, and 'Laying the Ghost' follows two other books in the area, 'Watching for Wings' (1979) and 'Strangers in the pews' (1993)