Review by Choice Review
O'Reilly (Univ. of Leicester, UK) and Lester (Indiana Univ.) have organized this handbook around an alternative perspective on children's mental health, one using discourse and conversation analysis (DA/CA). Arranged in six sections, the essays justify this alternative approach and explore the application to various childhood "difficulties," e.g., autism, ADHD, anorexia, and self-harm. Readers unfamiliar with terms such as reification, contextualization, interlocution, discursive construction/deconstruction, and positivism--all part of DA/CA--may be puzzled. The focus here is not on explanation, cause, and treatment but rather on alternative description. Later chapters on therapeutic approaches provide helpful discussions of stigma reduction, the damage of defining normal and abnormal, and the need for greater sensitivity in the therapeutic world. Less helpful are repetitive criticisms of standard diagnostic approaches. Most are aware that overdiagnosis is problematic, as is treating mental disorders medically without sufficient knowledge of physical mechanisms. There is little of practical value to practitioners, and the text presumes knowledge the uninitiated will not have. This is a book for those familiar with the DA/CA viewpoint and interested in recent qualitative endeavors. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals. --Julia F. Heberle, Albright College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
