Improving Mental Health through Social Support

Jonathan Leach is a lecturer in mental health at The Open University, UK, and chair of Tandem, a mental health befriending organisation in Oxford, UK, where he lives. He is past Chair of the UK's National Vocational Rehabilitation Association and formerly lectured on a post-graduate disability and employment course at City University in London. Having previously spent ten years working in a mental health and employment voluntary sector organisation and another three years researching the support needs of students with mental health problems, Jonathan has had a long and practical interest in social aspects of mental health.

Getting the basics right about responding to people with a psychiatric diagnosis is vital. In this book Jonathan Leach makes the eminently sensible case that one of those needs is for human association. Social support reduces our risk of developing mental health problems and it increases our luck of recovery when and if they develop. A clear and well written case is made for the reader that social support not clever technologies should be a high priority in mental health policy.