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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $40.95

Format:
Hardback
328 pp.
6.5" x 9.25"

ISBN-13:
9780190846596

Publication date:
January 2019

Imprint: OUP US


Headcase

LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness

Edited by Stephanie Schroeder and Teresa Theophano

Headcase is a groundbreaking collection of personal reflections and artistic representations illustrating the intersection of mental wellness, illness, and LGBTQ identity, as well as the lasting impact of historical views equating queer and trans identity with mental illness. The pieces offer personal views from both providers and clients, often one and the same, about their experiences. In the anthology, readers will access the inner thoughts of an array of individuals, including: a therapist with dual status who also happens to be transgender and practicing in the Midwest; a lesbian writer and psychotherapist recounting her mother's experience with forced institutionalization, shock therapy, and "conversion therapy" in the 1950s; a queer illustrator presenting unique glyph illustrations that represent a panoply of identity-related questions and answers; an award-winning gay male writer discussing his struggle with depression publicly for the first time; and a trans activist of color writing about surviving madness in the inner city and how his community of mental health and social justice youth activists help each other thrive. Several contributors also document the difficulty of navigating flawed health care systems that limit affordable access to genuinely affirming, effective services.

Cultural norms and barriers to accessibility have an enormous impact on the quality of care available to LGBTQ communities. Traversing boundaries of race and ethnic identity, age, gender identity, and socioeconomic status, Headcase should appeal to LGBTQ communities and, specifically, LGBTQ mental health consumers and their friends, families, and comrades.

Readership : The broad-based LGBTQ community/communities and, specifically, LGBTQ mental health consumers. Other major audiences include social workers (and social work students), psychologists (and psychology students), and psychiatrists (and medical students) who work with LGBTQ clients.

Reviews

  • "This book will fill an important gap in the LGBTQ literature and in the literature of mental illness, showing how liberation and destigmatization intersect, and giving strength to those who work at the locus of these two fields of study."

    --Andrew Solomon, PhD, arts, mental health, and LGBT activist; author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression; Professor of Clinical Psychology, Columbia University Medical Center; President of PEN American Center

Foreword, Kai Cheng Thom
Introduction, Stephanie Schroeder and Teresa Theophano
Part I: Conversations About Mental Health and Wellness
1. Falling Between the Cracks of Queer and Black, Tanisha Neely
2. Queer Affirmative Therapy, Arlene Istar Lev
3. Not All Wounds Are Visible, Louisa Hammond
4. Border/ lines, Juan Antonio Trujillo
5. Sa Kanyang Sariling Mga Salita: Health, Identity, and Articulations of Self, Donald V. Brown, Jr., with Fidelindo A. Lim
6. Trust Me, I'm a Doctor, Lynn Breedlove
7. LGBTQ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues: A Provider's Journey, Joseph Ruggiero
8. The Bone Crushing, Bill Konigsberg
Part II: Stories of Survival
9. In Chiron's Footsteps, Paula J. Williams
10. Not Our Fault, Chana Wilson
11. Figuring It Out Together: Mental Health Survival Strategies from Detroit's Queer and Trans Youth of Color, Lance Hicks
12. Sisyphus (or: Rocks Fall and Everyone Dies), J. R. Sullivan Voss
13. The Family Legacy Ends Here, Teresa Theophano
14. Roll the Dice, Michael Brown
15. Jesus and the Closets, Sara Zaanti
16. The Lived Experience of LGBT Veterans: Finding Support Within the VA Healthcare System, Kathryn Wagner
Part III: Encounters of the Mad Kind
17. Psychiatry, Kate Millett
18. Surviving Science, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Mad and Queer, Calvin Rey Moen
19. Knowing Reynolds, Lucy Winer
20. On a Subway Platform, a Life Flashes- Here, Gone, Antoine B. Craigwell
21. This Work Is About Digested Socks, Gabrielle Jordan Stein
22. Taming My Inner Fundamentalist, Kelly Barth
23. Fix Me Please: I'm Gay!, Guy Albert
24. Crowdsourcing My Antipsychotic, Stephanie Schroeder
Part IV: Pushing Boundaries
25. On Listening to Clients, or Why Do Providers Sometimes Have a Hard Time Hearing What Recipients of Care Have to Say?, Christian Huygen
26. Problem Glyphs, Eliza Gauger
27. Erasure, Gabriella M. Belfiglio
28. Informed Consent, Asher J. Wickell
29. Bad Penny, J. M. Ellison
30. Liberating The Big Pink Elephant in the Therapy Room, Thomas Mondragon
31. GLEAM, Nikkiesha N. McLeod
Part V: The Poetics of Mental Health and Wellness
32. Outlier: The Agoraphobia Fragments, Kevin Shaw
33. Were You Confused as a Child?, Stephen Mead
34. Pleasure- Based Parenting, Crista Anne
35. Doctor Anonymous: A Play, and a Lesson in Medical Ethics, Guy Fredrick Glass
36. Jekyll's Lover, James Penha
37. Feathers, Benjamin Klas
Resources
Index
.

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Stephanie Schroeder, JD, is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has been anthologized in: That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull Press, 2008); Here Come the Brides!: Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage (Seal Press, 2012); and Easy to Love but Hard to Live With: Real People, Invisible Disabilities, True Stories (DRT Press, 2014). Schroeder is a part-time peer advocate and the author of the memoir Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide (Creative Evolution, 2012).

Teresa Theophano, LMSW, is a freelance writer/editor and full-time social worker working with LGBTQ older adults in New York City. The volume editor of Queer Quotes (Beacon Press, 2004) and contributor to numerous anthologies and websites including xoJane.com and glbtq.com, Theophano has been involved in mental health advocacy and LGBTQ movement building for years. She is the co-founder of the NYC Queer Mental Health Initiative (QMHI), a peer-based support network based in Brooklyn, and is at work on a co-written volume about queer suicide prevention and postvention.

Social Work Practice with the LGBTQ Community - Edited by Michael P. Dentato
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves - Edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth

Special Features

  • Features voices from communities/demographics that do not typically have access to platforms through which to tell their stories.
  • Shares personal essays, poems, and visual artwork expressing the experience of living with a mental health issue as a member of the LGBTQ community.
  • Includes a Foreword by renowned Canadian writer, performer, and therapist Kai Cheng Thom.