Nervous breakdowns

Press, 18 February 1989, Page 27

Nervous breakdowns

Nervous Breakdown: What is it? What Causes it? Who Can Help? By Jenny Cozens. Piatkus/Macdonald, 1988. 230 pp. $19.99 (paperback). (Reviewed by Ralf Unger)

The author is a clinical psychologist at the University of Leicester and her explanations are pleasant, easy to follow, completely uncontroversial, and therefore somewhat bland. The research works she quotes seem to be mainly done within 100 km of her home base and they are mainline traditional investigations that have been described very fully in popular literature over the last 20 years. The image Ms Cozens had of nervous breakdowns when she was young was of “nerves — long thin white messenger systems ■ running throughout bodies — stopping working in some way.” What she sets out to do is to describe the full gamut of disorders ranging from stress reactions through anxiety states, phobias, eating problems, alcohol addictions, to psychoses such as the schizophrenias and manic depression.

About treatment she decides that “the way our minds and bodies work together is enormously complex and we are never likely to understand it fully. The important thing is to tackle

the physical, psychological, and social factors that are apparent to some extent in all disease and all dis-ease.”

Her outline of the disorders is impeccable and the style is smooth and the logic easy to follow. It is suggested that this is an excellent introduction for an enthusiastic sixth or seventh former deciding on the possibility of a career in clinical psychology, or dealing with disturbed people generally, and wanting to correct some of the more sensational impressions gathered from newspapers and magazine articles. There are many described case histories of the type seen by psychologists in a community clinic setting, cases which are frequently helped by the caring understanding and patience of somebody like this author.