Book List
The books can all be bought directly from Crazydiamond
 “The THRIVE Approach to Mental Wellness” - Marion Aslan & Mike Smith £19.99
A self help / guided approach to recovery. This book is aimed at individuals experiencing distress and their supporters. Devised by Mike Smith, a nurse of 25 years experience and former Director of Nursing in North Birmingham and Marion Aslan, a teacher and former user of mental health services who has worked in the learning disabilities and mental health voluntary sector for the last 30 years, we have drawn on our experiences of what keeps people maintained within the system and what works in the moving on process, whereby people thrive and find their future. Taking the underpinning elements of Time, Healing, Resilience, Interdependence, Vivacity and Emancipation this book accompanies the individual
on their journey to recovery and beyond, instils hope and optimism for a positive future, and enables the
person to chart their own course.
 “THRIVE assessment and planning tools” - Marion Aslan & Mike Smith
This planning tool is for individuals who are currently receiving services or support for psychic distress – distress to the mind, body and spirit. It will assist recovery by helping to organise and plan all relevant support needs in a way that is useful to the individual, their workers and families giving an overall direction of where the person wishes to be in their life.
The workbook is designed to help the individual direct their own recovery plan, in their own language and on their own terms, whilst acknowledging and taking responsibility for risks often posed to supporters. It will enable workers or supporters to get to know better what is required to facilitate recovery and understand how best to support that whilst minimizing the risk issues.
The THRIVE Approach focuses on the values of working with individuals in a person focussed, hopeful way towards recovery. It sometimes challenges traditional thinking and concepts of mental illness, focussing rather on working with the individual, their story, their hopes, their dreams, skills and strengths rather than symptoms.
 Working with Self Harm – Mike Smith £10.00
This workbook is an invaluable tool for people who self injure to identify, explore and understand their
experiences and to reframe them in a way which is meaningful for them to move on in their recovery. The
purpose of the book is to offer hope to the person who self injures and through a series of exercises
develop the confidence to own the experience, reclaim and ultimately take ownership of it. Workers and
supporters will also find this book extremely constructive in developing strategies for recovery.
 Working with Voices – Ron Coleman & Mike Smith £10.00
This workbook is an invaluable tool for voice hearers and the people they select to work with them.
The book disputes the notion that voices are the consequence of mental illness and instead focuses on
the context, meaning and individual interpretation of the person hearing the voices. Structured
exercises will help to unfold the relationship the person has with the voices and find more effective
ways of coping and will enable people who have difficulties with their voices and are overpowered by
them to take control. Workers and supporters will also find this book extremely constructive in developing
strategies for recovery.
 Working to Recovery – Ron Coleman, Paul Baker & Karen Taylor £10.00
This workbook is the third in the series of books on recovery written especially for people undergoing
emotionally distressing experiences and those who have been diagnosed as having a mental illness.
This workbook is intended as a practical tool in assisting you in your recovery, and asks you to accept
a personal challenge. While the challenge may at times be difficult and painful it does offer the
potential for personal change, discovery and growth – key elements on your journey to recovery.
 Psychiatric First Aid –Mike Smith, Ron Coleman, John Good - £10.00
This book draws together the wide range of methods for coping with psychotic experiences; from
singing out loud to in depth cognitive strategies. A handbook for nurses, carers and people distressed
by psychotic experiences, this book introduces alternative ways of coping with difficulties in the short
term and deals with various areas including; voices, visions, troublesome beliefs and what psychiatry
calls ‘negative symptoms’. It aims to direct the professional towards dealing directly with the
problems that the client presents, following on from diagnosis and treatment.
 Recovery, an Alien Concept – Ron Coleman £10.00
An exploration of the concept of recovery by Ron Coleman, including how he gave up being a chronic
schizophrenic and went back to being Ron. In ‘Recovery – An Alien Concept’ Ron attempts to reflect
on the past and learn the lessons of history in the psychiatric system, by exploring recovery and
encouraging professionals, clients and carers to begin their own personal journeys towards recovery.
In these pages the reader may feel the pain of those for whom the present system has failed, feel the
inspiration and joy of those who have recovered, and the desire to make recovery a reality for all.
Users and abusers of psychiatry -Lucy Johnstone
The book is a critical overview of psychiatric theory and practice and the biomedical model on which it is based. With the help of real life examples, it shows how psychiatric treatment often compounds people's problems and creates long-term dependence on the system. It argues for alternatives based on acknowlegement of the social and psychological causes of mental distress. It is written in clear and jargon-free language, accessible to service users and carers as well as professionals.
Lucy is a clinical psychologist, counselling psychologist, author and lecturer, who has spent many years both training mental health professionals and working in the psychiatric system. She has published many articles and chapters taking a critical perspective on subjects such as diagnosis, medication and ECT, and is a strong advocate of service user-led and self-help alternatives. She is currently Academic Director of the Bristol Clinical Psychology Doctorate.
Mad Pride – A Celebration of Mad Culture £10.00
Mad Pride is set to become the first great civil liberties movement of the 21st century. Sick of
discrimination, marginalization, medication and being treated like shit, psychiatric patients are
preparing to rise from the ghettos and make the world a fit place to live in. Featuring 24 authors
boasting about wild things they’ve done when they’re losing it, and sharing their accounts of liberation
through madness, this collection celebrates madness in all its forms as a means to all-out social
revolution.
Understanding Voices – Marius Romme, Sandra Escher £10.00
“Understanding Voices” - Coping with Auditory Hallucinations and Confusing Realities’, is a
collection of the original research by Romme and Escher, who founded the Hearing Voices movement.
The book covers three articles; the first is a study of an experiment in which people with auditory
hallucinations were brought into contact with and described their experiences to each other. The
second is a paper covering a pilot study comparing people who heard voices either diagnosed as
schizophrenic, or as having an affective disorder, which concludes that hearing voices is not primarily
an incomprehensible symptom of an illness but more a personal way of coping with personal
problems. The third article covers extensive research on the main results of the comparative study of
three groups with auditory hallucinations. Following the conclusion, Romme, Escher and Hage include
the ‘Maastricht Interview’ schedule, which has been used during their research, and is currently used
in therapy.
 Raising our Voices – Adam James £10.00
In this comprehensive book, Adam James demonstrates why he is the ‘Mind Journalist of the Year
2001’. He has brought both the philosophy and struggle of the Hearing Voices Network to life. In this
compelling book, the history of the Network from Julian Jaynes’ work on the bicameral mind to the
development of the UK Hearing Voices Network as a pseudo mainstream organisation is explained in
terms that anyone can understand. This book will invoke in its readers a multitude of emotions, from
happiness to sadness, from joy to anger, and more importantly, James has enabled the reader to
comprehend in a new way the lives of those who hear voices both in and outside of psychiatric
services.
 Killing Me Softly – Sharon LeFevre £10.00
This posthumous collected thoughts of Sharon Lefevre, a woman who campaigned for greater
understanding of self-injury. ‘Killing me Softly’ is an objective, non moralistic recognition of the
contradictions that occur within abuse and self-harm, and the controversy that this will cause makes
this book important, along with the no holds barred approach to the subject, which is at its best when
the concept of recovery is discussed. The challenge posed by this book is a challenge to all users,
professionals and carers. If we accept this challenge, then perhaps real changes in these areas can and
will happen.
 So You Think You’re Mad – Paul Hewitt £10.00
“So You Think You’re Mad - 7 Practical Steps to Mental Health’, outlines Paul Hewitt’s personal
struggle to attain mental well being and follows the steps he took to achieve this. The authors’
awareness of a world of increasing social disorder and individual despondency, and the lack of advice
offered in the area of attaining mental health, especially when suffering from the various psychological
inflictions and diagnoses of today’s social environment, prompted him to offer some practical
guidance in the art of freeing the mind of self-inhibiting mental disorder. Within these pages Hewitt
hopes to provide a system for the management of disorder and therefore, improved welfare.
 Politics of the Madhouse – Ron Coleman £3.00
“Politics Of The Madhouse’, is the result of thirteen years of living within the psychiatric system, and
is an analysis, rather than a personal experience of this system. Through his political beliefs, Ron
Coleman believes that it is only through revolutionary activity that ultimately change can be made and
that it is our duty to fight for reform in the here and now. This publication is unashamedly political in
content with Coleman’s belief that the whole issue of mental health is bound up inexorably with the
political system that we live in.
 Who’s hurting who? – Helen Spandler £10.00
“Self harm was a way of feeling that I was worth something to myself because I can say God, I can
control this – how many times I cut, how far I go, where I do it and how I do it”. Nobody can control
that…” Young people have their say on the issue of self harm and suicide. Helen Spandler’s collected
listenings to groups of young people who self harm
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