Raymond Jack spent much of his 30-year social work career in multi-disciplinary outreach teams providing psychiatric care in the community. Subsequently, he taught and researched in three UK universities and as Professor of Social Work at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge developed one of the first open learning routes to social work qualification in the UK.In addition to Women and Attempted Suicide, his publications include Residential Vs. Community Care (1998) and Empowerment in Community Care (1995). These publications make an enduring contribution to current debates on the role of gender, identity, individual agency, and control in mental health and social care practice and policy.
Reviews of the first publication: “The author is to be congratulated on writing a provoking, thoughtful and (above all) theoretically informed account of what is a neglected feature of the epidemiology of parasuicide, namely the gender bias.” — Stephen Platt, MRC Medical Sociology Unit, Glasgow “…This is a rewarding text, setting out as it does a case for explaining why women “attempt suicide” more than men: the explanation is in terms of gender role, habitual attributional styles, support systems and relationship breakdown. The high vulnerability of social class V females is argued convincingly. The book will be of interest to both graduates and postgraduates in many disciplines, as it covers basic theory as well as detail. — Professor H.G. Morgan, Department of Mental Health, University of Bristol