Do
Not Disturb
is
a critical reflection on the Dutch outpatient mental health
centres, based on the critical
professional literature as well as own observations of the
author in those centers.
The
author
discusses
the bureaucracy and issues concerning the patient-therapist
relationship such as careless psychiatric diagnoses and the
therapists inclination to use his own preferred treatment
methods at the expense of the patients needs. She
critizises the extensive use of the
the psychiatric
handbook
Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
because it is not suitable to diagnose patients in a mental
health setting.
She
also points out how the daily routine could change for the
better.
Do not disturb
ends with a description of the developments in the mental health
care after the Bijlmer Disaster (see also
Racial discrimination
in the mental health care
after the Bijlmer Airplane Crash
).
The
book is interlaced with cartoons and passages from the world
literature.
The eighty
cartoons
were created by the author on the request of a management
consultant as an intervention to bring about organizational
changes.
With this book the
author dropped a bombshell in the Dutch mental health care.
Do not disturb was well received by the public and
the public press (see below).
In
2008 Saar Roelofs' book Who
is crazy, actually? was published. The main
theme in this book is the relationship between patient and
therapist.
|