Beyond the Risk Paradigm in Mental Health Policy and Practice

Modern society is increasingly preoccupied with fears for the future and the idea of preventing ‘the worst’. The result is a focus on attempting to calculate the probabilities of adverse events occurring – in other words, on measuring risk. Since the 1990s, the idea of risk has come to dominate policy and practice in mental health across the USA, Australasia and Europe.

In this timely new text, a group of international experts examines the ways in which the narrow focus on specific kinds of risk, such as violence towards others, perpetuates the social disadvantages experienced by mental health service users whilst, at the same time, ignoring the vast array of risks experienced by the service users themselves. Benefitting from the authors’ extensive practice experience, the book considers how the dominance of the risk paradigm generates dilemmas for mental health organizations, as well as within leadership and direct practice roles, and offers practical resolutions to these dilemmas that both satisfy professional ethics and improve the experience of the service user.

Combining examination of key theories and concepts with insights from front line practice, this latest addition to Palgrave’s Beyond the Risk Paradigm series provides an important new dimension to debates on mental health provision.

Sonya Stanford is Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Tasmania, Australia.

Nina Rovinelli Heller is Dean, Director of the Doctoral Program, and Zachs Professor of Social Work at the University of Connecticut, USA.

Elaine Sharland is Professor of Social Work Research at the University of Sussex, UK.

Joanne Warner is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Kent, UK.