Michelle O'Reilly

Jessica Nina Lester

Tom Muskett

This book introduces a novel approach for examining language and communication in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) - discourse and conversation analysis. The authors offer a set of very different perspectives on these complex issues than are typically presented in psychological and clinical work. Emerging from a range of social scientific fields, discourse and conversation analysis involve fine-grained qualitative analysis of naturally-occurring, rather than laboratory-based, interaction, enabling broad applications. Presented in two parts, this innovative volume first provides a set of pedagogical chapters to develop the reader's knowledge and skills in using these approaches, before moving to showcase the use of discursive methods through a range of original contributions from world-leading scholars, drawn from a range of disciplines including sociology, academic and clinical psychology, speech and language therapy, critical disability studies and social theory, and medicine and psychiatry.

A Practical Guide to Social Interaction Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

This book explores how discursive psychology (DP) research can be applied to disability and the everyday and institutional constructions of bodymind differences. Bringing together both theoretical and empirical work, it illustrates how DP might be leveraged to make visible nuanced understandings of disability and difference writ large. The authors argue that DP can attend to how such realities are made relevant, dealt with, and negotiated within social practices in the study of disability. They contend that DP can be used to unearth the nuanced and frequently taken for granted ways in which disability is made real in both everyday and institutional talk, and can highlight the very ways in which differences are embodied in social practices – specifically at the level of talk and text. This book demonstrates that rather than simply staying at the level of theory, DP scholars can make visible the actual means by which disabilities and differences more broadly are made real, resisted, contested, and negotiated in everyday social actions. This book aims to expand conceptions of disability and to deepen the – at present, primarily theoretical – critiques of medicalization.

Discursive Psychology and Disability

This book explores social constructionism and the language of mental distress. Mental health research has traditionally been dominated by genetic and biomedical explanations that provide only partial explanations. However, process research that utilises qualitative methods has grown in popularity. Situated within this new strand of research, the authors examine and critically assess some of the different contributions that social constructionism has made to the study of mental distress and to how those diagnosed are conceptualized and labeled. This will be an invaluable introduction and source of practical strategies for academics, researchers and students as well as clinical practitioners, mental health professionals, and others working with mental health such as educationalists and social workers.

The Language of Mental Health

Examining Mental Health through Social Constructionism

A landmark publication in the field, this state of the art reference work includes contributions from leading thinkers across a range of disciplines on topics including ADHD, autism, depression, eating disorders and trauma. It is an essential resource for all those involved or interested in child mental health.

Jessica Nina Lester

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