Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Communication, mental health, and how language-based research can help in practice Part 1: Communication with children and families 2. Communication in child mental health: Improving engagement with families 3. Exploring the practical potential of discursive research in family therapy 4. Communication in clinical psychology – using ‘you said’ in interactions with children to assess for risk 5. Children’s communication and their mental health: perspectives from speech and language therapy 6. ‘Just ask’: How to talk to children and young people about self-harm and suicide risk 7. Communicating with parents about psychotropic medication treatment Part 2: Communication with adults 8. Deception, fantasy and confabulation: What the stories of forensic patients with intellectual disabilities tell us about truth in therapeutic interactions 9. Communicating about feelings: examples from depression care 10. Communication in mental health nursing – the power of the words we choose 11. Exploring the ‘talk’ of suicide: using discourse-informed approaches in exploring suicide risk Part 3: Learning Journeys 12. A PhD learning journey - the value of conversation analysis and discourse approaches for speech and language clinical practice. 13. Developing supra-vision using naturally occurring video material within supervision 14. Communication in research, evaluation or audit

About the Author

Michelle O’Reilly is an associate professor of communication in mental health at the University of Leicester, UK.

Jessica Nina Lester is an associate professor of inquiry methodology in the School of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.