Partners in Healing

William Glassman is a professor of psychology at Ryerson Polytechnical
University in Toronto.

Partners in Healing provides a multifaceted view of the nature of
psychiatry today. The inclusion of multiple perspectives is quite apt,
given that mental health issues have become a concern to many groups in
society, from psychiatrists and other health professionals to patients
and their families.

This slim book, with its multiple authors and contributors, emerged out
of the work of an Advisory Committee on Mental Health Reform created by
the Ontario Ministry of Health in 1992. The reports of special
commissions do not normally make for engaging reading, but Partners in
Healing is both interesting and informative, in part because of the
range of participants. Included on the committee were psychiatrists,
other mental health professionals, patients, families of patients, and
mental health advocates. As Alan Eppel (then president of the Ontario
Psychiatric Association) notes, what began as an uneasy meeting between
diverse “stakeholders” became a forum for dialogue and
understanding. The end result was a series of recommendations related to
mental health care (including a draft statement endorsed by the Ontario
Psychiatric Association), as well as some vivid and personal accounts of
the challenges facing the mental health system today.

Despite the Ontario roots of the committee and its members, Partners in
Healing is relevant to any mental health professional. In particular,
the chapters by patients and family members (including one by a
psychiatrist as a patient) should be mandatory reading for
professionals-in-training. The book maintains a clear and readable style
throughout, and references for the various sections provide sources for
those who wish to read further. General readers with an interest in the
issues of mental health care will find the book accessible, though it
should not be viewed as a self-help guidebook.