Women’s Minds, Women’s Bodies : Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women’s Health

The most positive approaches to women's health frequently emerge from women's own endeavors to achieve physical and mental balance in their lives. Abandoning the artificiality of subject divides, this book engages with that ethos. Drawing on the experience of an interdisciplinary women's health initiative, Fiona Poland and Gwyneth Boswell have assembled a formidable range of academic and professional experts in this highly accessible collection. Concepts of health are explored across disciplines which include psychology, law, history, health economics, nursing, counseling, social work, and sociology. Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction: Exploring Women’s Health — Differences, Discourses and Disciplines....Pages 1-18 Front Matter....Pages 19-19 Images of Women’s Health and Healing: Cultural Prescriptions?....Pages 21-35 Disordered Minds: Women, Men and Unreason in Thought, Emotion and Behaviour....Pages 36-47 Front Matter....Pages 49-49 Women and Deliberate Self-Harm....Pages 51-64 Women, Drugs and Alcohol....Pages 65-76 Beyond Health and Beauty: A Critical Perspective on Fitness Culture....Pages 77-88 Listening Within: Counselling Women in Awareness of the Body....Pages 89-100 Front Matter....Pages 101-101 Professional Control or Women’s Choice in Childbirth? Is Either Possible?....Pages 103-115 Pregnant Women and Consent to Treatment — From Autonomy to State Control and Back Again....Pages 116-128 Long-term Psychological Effects of Child Sexual Abuse....Pages 129-143 Maternal Depression and the Needs of the Child....Pages 144-155 Can Women with Learning Disabilities Access Good Health Care? A Case Study of Cervical Screening....Pages 156-169 Front Matter....Pages 171-171 Health Policy and Provision for Maternity Care in the United Kingdom in the Twentieth Century....Pages 173-191 Ethnicity and Inequalities in Older Women’s Health....Pages 192-207 Discursive Challenges: Reproductive Rights and Women’s Well-Being in Developing Countries....Pages 208-220 Back Matter....Pages 221-258 The editors of this book provide a fresh, accessible and positive framework for understanding the health of women's minds and bodies and managing the associated risks. Health care perspectives, not normally found in a single volume, are enlisted to challenge artificial restrictions on women's health issues and to bridge the theory/practice divide. Contributors dicuss research and clinical practice from cultural history; nursing; clinical psychology; medicine; allied health professions; sociology; social work; counselling; health economics; law and development studies. Each provides further readings in their discipline. An holistic approach to mind and body is dynamically developed to address key themes in health action. This dynamic analysis is developed in four sections on historical influences; how women's bodies may be actively built or broken; the dialogues which construct, empower and disempower women's health; initiatives taken by women in actively caring for their own and others' health through personal relationships and policy-building. The most positive approaches to women's health frequently emerge from women's own endeavours to achieve physical and mental balance in their lives. Abandoning the artificiality of subject divides, this book engages with that ethos. Drawing on the experience of an interdisciplinary women's health initiative, Gwyneth Boswel and Fiona Poland l have assembled a formidable range of academic and professional experts in this highly accessible collection. Concepts of health are explored across disciplines which include psychology, law, history, health economics, nursing, counselling, social work and sociology.