Book facts
Mental health and mental illness, to the average individual, are issues that are usually confronting and challenging. Similarly, even to most doctors and medical students, Psychiatry is an abstract discipline, away from the comfort zone of the more ‘mainstream’ disciplines in their medical curriculum.
Associated with this is the fact that especially in the Sri Lankan setting these topics are usually associated with a substantial amount of stigma. There is little wonder then that there is a paucity of books, let alone good books, written on related topics.
Colombo University’s Professor in Psychiatry, Raveen Hanwella attempts to fill this void with two compact volumes. He has authored the ‘Handbook of Psychotherapy for Clinicians’ with a Consultant Psychiatrist colleague, Chathurie Suraweera, and also penned ‘How to Improve Your Mind’.
The former is clearly aimed at trainees in Psychiatry. It is indeed a brave psychiatrist that ventures into the realm of psychotherapy, which is mostly the domain of psychologists. It is an even smarter one that is able to write a manual on the discipline that is both instructive and interesting.
Hanwella and Suraweera achieve this with their narrative style of writing and their knack for simplifying complex psychological principles using examples of practical application. The authors, both practising psychiatrists are also candid in the assessment of their own profession saying that psychiatrists have become psychopharmacologists because they mostly prescribe medicines for mental illness, noting that ‘the results have been unsatisfactory’.
What follows is a series of basic instructions and the different forms of psychotherapies for common presentations, replete with examples. It is, as its title states, a ‘ handbook’, so it is not a comprehensive textbook but for the trainee in Psychiatry who is trying to fathom the depths of psychotherapy, this book would probably be what he was searching for in the library all these years. It is also likely to whet the appetite of those with a serious interest in psychotherapy to dig deeper into the discipline.
‘How to Improve Your Mind’ has been written for a larger audience and is indeed an enjoyable and thought provoking read. Hanwella examines everyday issues, providing an insightful mental health perspective into them.
Topics such as ‘Stress and coping with stress’, ‘Managing your emotions’, ‘Influence-Obedience to authority’ and ‘Critical thinking and superstition’ are those that most would be able to relate to and Hanwella presents his opinions about each of them in a convincing manner, not being shy to introduce the results of scientific tests and experiments in support of them.
Its text is laced liberally not only with stories about patients and research findings but also with vignettes from history and quotations from literature where Shakespeare makes a frequent appearance. It is Hanwella’s ability to combine all these elements into a cogent argument that makes it a good read while at the same time providing food for thought.
The chapter on ‘Critical thinking and superstition’ is particularly well executed. Hanwella presents the evidence both for and against superstition without any bias and then guides the reader through the evidence with forensic skill that would be edifying to most in a country such as Sri Lanka, besotted as it is with superstitious beliefs and associated practices.
If there is to be a criticism it is that, after having taken the effort to produce a volume that examines such socially pertinent issues that would immensely benefit the ‘average’ individual, more such matters with everyday relevance were not dealt with.
Nevertheless, these two volumes fill a much needed void, more so because they have been set in a Sri Lankan context which would make it that much more interesting and enjoyable for the local reader at a time when mental health in Sri Lanka has made significant gains but still has to take giant strides if it is to be on par with the developed world.
Hanwella and Suraweera should be commended for embarking on an endeavour such as this which would have taken considerable time and effort.