Customer Reviews

Textbook of Integrative Mental Health Care

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The Textbook of Integrative Mental Health Care is, in my opinion, a tour-de-force. The book opens with a forward from Larry Dossey, MD highlighting the importance of considerations of spirituality and mind-body therapies in medicine, and in mental health care.

Part 1 of the book exposes some of the philosophical (epistemological) assumptions governing biomedicine and the way such assumptions inherently deflect biomedicine toward bias against potentially valuable CAM therapies. Relevant chapters canvass not only the "evolution of integrative medicine and implications for mental health care"--a topic not satisfactorily covered anywhere else, to date; and philosophical problems inherent in biomedicine; but also the foundations of paradigms in medicine, psychiatry and integrative medicine.

Some of the stunning propositions that Dr. Lake explores in the Textbook of Integrative Mental Health Care include, for example, the notion that biomedicine relies on assumptions of causality that are paradigm-dependent, whereas "many nonconventional systems of medicine involve nondeterministic models, including Jungian synchronicity, quantum field theory, and models of psychic functioninig (psi), in efforts to explain the observed characteristics or 'meanings' of symptoms outside of a limited classical model of linear causality" (p. 41),

The fusion of philosophy, physics, psychiatry, and a wealth of knowledge from other relevant disciplines is staggering. I write this as an admirer of Dr. Lake the psychiatrist-writer as well as from the standpoint of one who knows James Lake, the man.

In Textbook of Integrative Mental Health Care, Dr. Lake is also one of the first--if not the first--to render with any authority and clarity the core philosophical underpinnings of energy medicine in ways that are plausible, if not convincing. Drawing on complexity theory, systems approaches, proton entanglement, conceptual definitions of embodiment, paradigm-dependent interpretations of pathology, and divergent notions of human consciousness, Dr. Lake's text effortlessly weaves together multiple perspectives to create a coherent whole.

All of this then leads to a unique and possibly prophetic delineation of "foundations of clinical methodology in integrative medicine," including "history taking, assessment of formulation in integrative mental health care" and "starting and maintaining integrative treatment in mental health care." All this is replete with algorithms for assessment, treatment, and follow-up care, and comprehensive references laying out the clinical data thus far.

This masterful assimilation of disparate strands of knowledge about mental health care then forms the basis for Part 2 of the Textbook of Integrative Mental Health Care, entitled, Integrative Management of Common Mental and Emotional Symptoms. In this part, Dr. Lake first outlines "symptom-focused integrative mental health care," and then goes into each of the major categories of mental health with integrative health care approaches.

Thus, he deals with:

* integrative management of depressed mood
* integrative management of mania and cyclic mood changes
* integrative management of anxiety
* integrative management of psychosis
* integrative management of dementia and mild cognitive impairment
* integrative management of substance abuse and dependence
* integrative management of disturbances of sleep and wakefulness.

Generous appendices provide Web and other references for further study.

I highly recommend the Integrative Mental Health Care for all mental health caregivers, including (and especially) psychiatrists but also counselors of all sorts and psychiatrists.

Further, since most of us spend some time in our lives in some form of either anxiety and depression (so the experts tell us--that's the bad news), the book is very helpful and accessible even to the lay reader (that's the good news!). Buy this book for yourself--heck, buy the book for your psychiatrist or therapist, and learn how best to integrate complementary and alternative medical therapies such as acupuncture, selected herbal therapies and dietary supplements, massage therapy, aromatherapy, homeopathy, chiropractic, meditation and prayer, yoga, music therapy, and mind-body and other practices generally into conventional clinic mental health care.

In sum, this book bridges the world of conventional mental health care, with its cognitive, pharmaceutical, and other therapies, and the world of complementary medicine, with its alternative-paradigm theories, practices, assessment approaches, and treatment choices. Dr. Lake has blazed a trail for many other clinicians and researchers to follow, one which surely will be of lasting service to them and to the patients (and their families) to whom they offer care.

For this reason I have profiled the book on the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Law Blog and will continue to add further detail regarding the book's contribution to integrative mental health care over time.

Most patients seeing psychiatrists want to be treated as whole people, yet conventional Psychiatry often emphasizes their biological aspects above all else. Not only does this disparity lead to misunderstanding between "treaters" and "treated", but it also limits what treatments the treaters consider at all.

With this book Dr. Lake gives words to this huge disparity, effectively describing both the philosophical gulf and ways to address mental health problems more resourcefully. How doctors look at any "disease" greatly impacts the interventions they consider. Dr. Lake makes us aware of these paradigm filters we might not have realized were present, and helps us move beyond them in safe and effective ways.

This text even incorporates ideas about consciousness in mental health, with applications and implications for us all. Unfortunately the book's highly academic publishing style (long paragraphs with little white space) could put off casual or lay readers. But it's a true god-send for physicians, other mental health practitioners, and possibly CAM practitioners seeking understanding beyond their own professional areas. There are some tables and diagrams highlighting the material in different ways for different learning styles.

Dr. Lake not only explores the philosophical and research issues in Integrative Mental Health/Integrative Psychiatry, but he also discusses assessment and treatment methods in Integrative Mental Health care. Safety issues are discussed. He examines most clinical mental health problems that present in office practices, with evidence-based treatment interventions incorporating CAM methods that conventional physicians may not have heard about. He includes energy medicine in this work, even though many in the conventional medical world shun such approaches.

Yet another excellent part of the text is the appendix, which includes many resources for evaluating natural products and monitoring ongoing research in both conventional and non-conventional treatments.

Despite the breadth of CAM approaches explored in the text, Dr. Lake emphasizes that none of them precludes psychological work. I am so glad he mentions this because it's so often overlooked in both CAM and conventional treatments! Psychological work does not have to mean "psychotherapy", even though a therapist can be an excellent partner in such processes.

Dr. Lake is courageous to have written this encompassing text, and I heartily recommend it as a prime reference in a hopefully growing field.