Qualitative methods are increasingly useful as psychiatry shifts from a focus on symptom reduction to enabling people to live satisfying and meaningful lives. It becomes important to achieve a deeper understanding of the ways in which mental illness interferes with everyday life and the ways in which people can learn to manage and minimize illness in order to pursue their lives as fully as possible. Although qualitative methods in psychiatry have seen a dramatic upsurge, relatively few published studies use such methods specifically to explore the lives, socio-culturally and experientially, of those with first-episode psychosis.

This book highlights qualitative research in early psychosis. The first half of the book centres on the individual lived experience of psychosis - from the perspective of the individual, the family, and the practitioner. The second half moves from the micro level to the macro, focusing on broader system issues, including medical trainees' encounters with first-episode psychosis in the emergency room and the implementation of first-episode clinics in the UK and Australia. This text is timely, as the proliferation of early-psychosis clinics worldwide demands that we inquire into the subjective experience of those impacted by psychosis and the social contexts within which it occurs and is lived out.

Hearing Voices is the first in a series of titles from The Community Health Systems Resource Group at The Hospital for Sick Children. This series will educate researchers, policy-makers, students, practitioners, and interested stakeholders on such topics as early intervention in psychosis, aggressive-behaviour problems, eating-related disorders, and marginalized youth in educational contexts.

• Hearing Voices: Qualitative Inquiry in Early Psychosis, edited by Katherine M. Boydell and H. Bruce Ferguson
• Preface Katherine Boydell, University of Toronto
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction to Early Intervention in First Episode Psychosis Jean Addington, University of Calgary
• Chapter 1: Recognition of Psychosis in the Pathway to Mental Health Care Katherine M. Boydell, Elaine Stasiulis, Brenda M. Gladstone, Tiziana Volpe, Jean Addington, Paula Goering, Terry Krupa, and Elizabeth McCay, University of Toronto, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Queen's University, and Ryerson University
• Chapter 2: Help-Seeking Experiences of Youth with First Episode Psychosis: A Research-Based Dance Production Katherine M. Boydell, Siona Jackson, and John S. Strauss, University of Toronto and Yale University
• Chapter 3: Qualitative Research with Families of First Episode and Prodromal Patients Ruth Gerson and Cheryl Corcoran, Columbia University
• Chapter 4: Primary Care Perspectives of First Episode Psychosis Helen Lester, University of Manchester
• Chapter 5: Hearing Echoes: Image Identification and the Clinicians' (Learning) Experience with Early Intervention Joan McIlwrick, University of Calgary
• Chapter 6: Promoting Constructive Change in the Service System: A Qualitative Study of Change in Staff Attitudes with the Implementation of Early Intervention in Psychosis Alan Rosen, Joanne Gorrell, Alison Cornish, Vivienne Miller, Chris Tennant, Louise Nash, and Dianne McKay, University of Melbourne
• Chapter 7: Ironic Interventions: Balancing Risks and Rewards in First Episode Psychosis via Qualitative Inquiry Sue E. Estroff, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Conclusion Katherine M. Boydell, H. Bruce Ferguson, and Sarah J. Bovaird, University of Toronto
• Index