Following extensive research in the UK, Bruce Cohen allows mental health users to tell their own stories (or "narratives") of illness and recovery. Institutional and home treatment care is covered alongside controversial self-coping techniques such as drug-taking, spiritualism, alternative healing, sleep and watching television. This book is the first volume allowing mental health users to speak to the professional community which offers to treat them and as such will be an important resource for professionals, students and practitioners in the mental health field.