Books and Book Chapters
Available now for purchase or free download from University of California Press!
Breaking Points explores the stories of a diverse group of American young adults experiencing psychiatric hospitalization for psychotic symptoms for the first time and documents how patients and their families make decisions about treatment after their release. Approximately half of young people refuse mental-health care after their initial hospitalization even though better outcomes depend on early support.
In attempting to determine why this is the case, Neely Laurenzo Myers identifies what matters most to young people in crisis, passionately arguing that health care providers must attend not only to the medical and material dimensions of care but also to a patient’s moral agency.
“Reading the heartbreaking and heartwarming narratives in Breaking Points makes us more human and connected. I highly recommend it.” — LISA DIXON, Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
“Through compassionate ethnographic storytelling, Neely Myers makes first-episode psychosis legible as a startling fissure in the young person’s quest for acceptance and autonomy. A must-read for scholars of youth culture, medicine, and mental health alike, Breaking Points exemplifies the anthropological nuances of holding space and listening deeply.” — ELIZABETH BROMLEY, Director, UCLA- DMH Public Mental Health Partnership, University of California, Los Angeles
“A beautifully written study of the complexity of first-episode psychoses that challenge youth, their friends and family, and care providers, Breaking Points is an indictment of the inadequacies of entire service systems.” — BYRON J. GOOD, Professor of Medical Anthropology, Harvard Medical School
NEELY LAURENZO MYERS is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Mental Health Equity Lab at Southern Methodist University and author of Recovery’s Edge. She is also Editor in Chief of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.
Recovery’s Edge: An Ethnography of Mental Health Care and Moral Agency
Available at Vanderbilt University Press and Amazon.
In 2003 the Bush Administration’s New Freedom Commission asked mental health service providers to begin promoting “recovery” rather than churning out long-term, “chronic” mental health service users. Recovery’s Edge sends us to urban America to view the inner workings of a mental health clinic run, in part, by people who are themselves “in recovery” from mental illness.
In this provocative narrative, Neely Myers sweeps us up in her own journey through three years of ethnographic research at this unusual site, providing a nuanced account of different approaches to mental health care. Recovery’s Edge critically examines the high bar we set for people in recovery through intimate stories of people struggling to find meaningful work, satisfying relationships, and independent living.
This book is a recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.
In Edited Volumes
Myers, N. A Fragile Recovery in the United States. In Our Most Troubling Madness, pp. 180-95. Tanya Marie Luhrmann and Jocelyn Morrow, eds. University of California Press: Berkeley. 2016.
Myers, N. ‘Shared Humanity’ among Nonspecialist Peer Care Providers for Persons Living with Psychosis: Implications for Global Mental Health. In Global Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives, pp. 325-40. Kohrt, Brandon, and Emily Mendenhall, Eds. Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA. 2015.
Myers, N. Diagnosing Psychosis-Scientific Uncertainty, Locally and Globally. In Diagnostic Controversy: Cultural Perspectives on Competing Knowledge in Healthcare, pp. 191-214. Smith-Morris, Carolyn, Ed. Routledge: New York, NY. 2015.
Myers, N. The Tie that Binds. In Community Health Narratives, pp. 120-32. Mendenhall, Emily, and Kathy Wollner, Eds. University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque, NM. 2015.