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An exploration of the literature was undertaken on the question of whether or not bereavement after suicide, as opposed to other modes of death, renders individuals more susceptible to enduring and complicated grief reactions. The literature from qualitative research indicated that there appeared to be a greater prevalence of individual and contextual risk factors leading to complicated bereavement for survivors of suicide, as opposed to those bereaved through most other modes of death. Trauma-related research and survivors' anecdotal reports emphasised the potential for proximal factors and specific experiences in the immediate aftermath of a suicide that could facilitate, or complicate bereavement. Factors found to indicate that suicide bereavement is distinct include survivors more often experiencing feelings of rejection, responsibility, guilt and blame, with feelings of shame and embarrassment interacting with a sense of stigmatisation. In addition, reports indicated ambivalent, challenging and negative relationships with service providers after the suicide. The impact of such factors remains largely overlooked in the context of suicide, and we therefore argue that the immediate post-death experience, specific to suicide survivors, presents a critical primary site for risk prevention and building resilience with survivors. We reflect on training for front line workers in this context. ' (Parkes, 1985, p. 15) Keywords

This article proposes alternative understandings of certain structuralist informed (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - DSM-IIIrd to 5th Eds.) configurations of mental disorders. Life’s negative discourses and the mind’s captive responses present a “general theory of mental suffering” which phenomena are classified as modernist, DSM mental disorders, such as addictions, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Recent research has indicated that the psychedelic drug, psilocybin, has produced safe and effective outcomes for these mental suffering states. In this context, the article draws on the concept of brain plasticity order, firstly, to identify the means for a person to move away from subjection of life’s negative, dominant discourses that “capture” the brain, and then to intentionally move towards more acceptable, preferred, ethical subjectivities. These explanations, using the phenomenon of depression, provide the foundation for further proposals that an innovative form of narrative therapy could be a safe, effective and meaningful approach for persons in relationship with other similar ways of mental suffering, such as, anxiety, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa is currently presented as a pathologised, psycho-medical feminine phenomenon through aetiological rationalisations and theories. Research results indicate that there have been no improvements in treatment outcomes for anorexia for over 50 years, except, possibly, with forms of family therapy for adolescents. This situation can be seen as critical and calls for alternative ways of understanding anorexia, and consequent different approaches to psychotherapy for persons in relationship with anorexia. This article critically explores these issues, and suggests that such circumstances offer opportunities for alternative post-structuralist approaches for informing different understandings of and working with anorexia in collaborative relational arrangements where the voices of persons in relationship with anorexia are honoured and heard.This article examines modernist, structuralist understandings of, treatment approaches for, and discourses about anorexia nervosa that have prevailed over the past half century, and their objectifying, pathologising, normative practices. 1 It offers a brief account of research outcomes of treatment for persons in relationship with anorexia, essentially indicating a cause for significant concern in the use of the medical model that has sustained ways of understanding the nature of anorexia, and psychotherapeutic ways of working.However, a relatively recent shift, from individual therapy to particular forms of family therapy used in outpatient settings for adolescents with a shorter duration of relationship with anorexia, has contributed towards improvements in clinical outcomes. This is discussed and developed with explorations of a post-constructionist approach to

The purpose of this article is to apply innovative analogue and digital thinking processes that, first, negate DSM (III to 5th Eds.) understandings of anorexia, and then formulate a bases which encapsulates alternative understandings of the universal patterns of behavior, understandings that honour and embrace the patterns of behavior expressed by each person. Published research of lived experiences of persons who exhibit patterns of behavior and attitudes towards food, weight, body shape and size, that are deemed to be diagnostic criteria of anorexia nervosa, provides evidence that those patterns of behavior serve as coping mechanisms against the suffocating forces of unwanted, specific, and personal discourses in their lives. As a consequence of this application, the article argues that these universal patterns of behavior and attitudes to food, weight and body image, expressed uniquely by each person, are expressions, images and ideas of a specific form of an archetype, with each person having their personal and unique reasons for their behavioral expressions. This analyses indicates that these persons do not “suffer from” a mental eating disorder called anorexia, and that psychotherapeutic approaches for each person should focus on the problems in their lives, problems that cause them to express the images and ideas of a universal archetype.