This book foregrounds the importance of narrative as a conceptual paradigm for understanding mental health issues, presenting stories as an alternative source of knowledge and expression. At the same time, the volume acknowledges potential limitations of narrative paradigms, especially when these are coupled with normative expectations of truthfulness, coherence, and comprehensiveness.

Narratives and Mental Health: An Introduction Jarmila Mildorf, Elisabeth Punzi & Christoph Singer Part I: Theoretical Approaches to Researching Narratives and Mental Health Chapter 1: Imagining an Alternate Psychology Brian Schiff Chapter 2: I Have Many Sick Hearts: Stories about Illness and Life Jens Brockmeier & Maria I. Medved Chapter 3: Narrative Practices in Mental Health: Narrative Therapy and the Fictive Stance Daniel D. Hutto Part II: Current Narrative Practices in Psychology and Psychotherapy Chapter 4: The Art of Teaching the Art of Listening: An Interview Study with University Teachers in Clinical Psychology and Social Work Elisabeth Punzi & Malgorzata Erikson Chapter 5: The Aftermath of Silencing the Trauma - A Narrative Case Study Soly Erlandsson & Nicolas Dauman Chapter 6: Writing as Narrative Resource in Therapeutic Settings: Diaries, Sketches, Notes Jarmila Mildorf & Daniel Ketteler Chapter 7: What Constitutes Mad Behavior? Changes in the Grand Narrative of Disorder Delineated in Psychiatric Diagnoses between 1832 and 1980 Malin Hildebrand Karlén Part III: Narratives of Aging, Dementia and Depression Chapter 8: How to Narrate a Healthy Life: Life-Stories and Mental Health in Interviews with the Elderly Aged 90+ Mari Hatavara Chapter 9: Narrative Ethics and Dementia: Critical Comments and Modifications Daniela Ringkamp Chapter 10: Narrative Experiments with Medical Categorisation and Normalisation in B. S. Johnson's House Mother Normal Sara Strauss Chapter 11: Mental Illness Representations in the German Mass Media: The Case of Depression Marina Iakushevich Part IV: Mental Health, Life Storying, Trauma and Artistic Expression Chapter 12: Narrating Shame in Contemporary Mental Distress Memoirs by British Women Katrin Röder Chapter 13: Psychic Relief and Non-Narrative Configurations in Graphic Memoirs about Mental Health Lasse R. Gammelgaard Chapter 14: Memory is a Strange Thing: Science Fiction, Trauma and Time in Arrival Christoph Singer Index

Jarmila Mildorf is Associate Professor for English Literary and Cultural Studies at Paderborn University, Germany. She is a member of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, the European Narratology Network, the International Network for Address Research, and the German Network for Narrative Medicine, on the advisory board of the research center Narrare, and co-editor of the book series Narratives and Mental Health (Brill) and the Romanian journal Eon. Elisabeth Punzi is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work, and Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, Gothenburg University. Her research includes critical perspectives on diagnostic systems and established treatment methods and the prerequisites for providing client-centered care. Christoph Singer is Professor for British and Anglophone Cultural Studies in the Department of British Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has published anthologies on intersections of Middlebrow & Modernism, the iconography of Dante & Milton, and on spaces of Well-Being. His second book discusses the temporality of narratives in times of crisis, particularly the experience of existential waiting.

Selling point: Presents interdisciplinary approach to narratives of mental health, featuring work from scholars in various fields such as psychology, philosophy, social work, literary studies, cultural studies, and linguistics Selling point: Foregrounds alternative approaches to and methods for tackling mental health issues, including narrative psychology, narrative therapy, the psychodynamic approach, a dialogical or listening approach, and diary writing Selling point: Argues for the importance of narrative as a conceptual paradigm for understanding mental health issues and of stories as an alternative source of knowledge while acknowleging their limitations