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  1. Home
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  3. A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health
  • Cited by 14
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
2009
Online ISBN:
9780511984945
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511984945
Subjects:
Sociology: General Interest, Sociology
Collection:
Cambridge Handbooks of Psychology
Information

Book description

The second edition of A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health provides a comprehensive review of the sociology of mental health. Chapters by leading scholars and researchers present an overview of historical, social and institutional frameworks. Part I examines social factors that shape psychiatric diagnosis and the measurement of mental health and illness, theories that explain the definition and treatment of mental disorders and cultural variability. Part II investigates effects of social context, considering class, gender, race and age, and the critical role played by stress, marriage, work and social support. Part III focuses on the organization, delivery and evaluation of mental health services, including the criminalization of mental illness, the challenges posed by HIV, and the importance of stigma. This is a key research reference source that will be useful to both undergraduates and graduate students studying mental health and illness from any number of disciplines.

Reviews

"As a useful 'starting point,' the second edition of the Handbook provides a helpful reference work on an expanse of issues for students and professionals wanting to take a step back to understand the influences, factors, and stressors that may have contributed to the clinical picture." - PsycCRITIQUES

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Contents

Page 2 of 2

Contents
  • Part III - Mental Health Systems and Policy
    pp 407-588
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter presents a discussion of societal factors that affect mental health and illness among African American women. The discussion is guided by the diagram which illustrates that structural location as defined by the triangulation of race, gender, and class can influence mental well-being directly or indirectly by impinging on other more proximate processes. The mental well-being of African American women varies by age, marital status, household headship, parenthood, and employment. Among the social factors that diminish well-being among African American women are stressors resulting from the triangulation of racism, sexism, and low Socioeconomic Status (SES). Access to health care is critical for mental well-being because it contributes to healthier, longer lives. Quality health care for African American women requires access and utilization of mental health services that are culturally appropriate and sensitive to the social context of their lives as well as access and use of primary care.
  • 21 - Understanding the Context and Dynamic Social Processes of Mental Health Treatment 
    pp 420-438
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter examines the evidence for an effect of marital status on mental health, with a particular focus on the factors that identify who benefits from marriage, who suffers from marital dissolution, and under what circumstances. Studies of marital status differences in mental health commonly employ outcome measures of psychological distress and depressive symptoms. Several recent longitudinal studies have demonstrated that entering marriage is associated with increases in psychological well-being and declines in psychological distress. A growing body of research provides convincing evidence that the mental health benefits of marriage and the costs of marital dissolution vary greatly, depending on a range of individual, demographic, and relationship characteristics. These are commonly referred to as moderators of the relationship between marriage and mental health. Finally, it is important to remember that marriage and marital dissolution both involve a combination of rewards and strains.
  • 22 - Cultural Diversity and Mental Health Treatment
    pp 439-460
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter focuses primarily on one subset of the social stressors that impinge on children and adolescents: stressors that are linked to their social memberships in particular families. It examines how family composition and parental employment patterns, which together shape family economic position, are linked to patterns of parent-child interaction as well as to the development and persistence of behavior problems. Social-psychological theory and empirical research both have suggested that the conditions adults experience at work affect their own cognitive functioning and emotional well-being and shape values they hold for their children. Social stressors-particularly parental conflict and unstable adult family composition, difficult parental working conditions, and inadequate incomes undermine the quality of parental child rearing and so make the development of behavior problems more likely. When such stressors increase, children will exhibit more behavior problems. Conversely, decreases in social stressors should diminish children's behavior problems over time.
  • 23 - The Mental Health Consumers/Survivors Movement in the United States
    pp 461-477
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter focuses on Black adolescents and the most common adolescent mental health concern: depression. It discusses prevalence estimates and identifies environmental and cultural risk and protective factors associated with depression. The chapter considers the role of racial discrimination and neighborhood influences as structural factors that have implications for psychopathology. It also examines what is known about the relationship between depression and risky sexual behaviors as a way to better understand the complexity of adolescent mental health and a prevalent problem behavior among Black youth. Throughout this chapter the term Black adolescents is used to refer to the numerous distinct cultures that characterize people of African ancestry who have settled in the United States. Challenges for future research include the use of measurement scales that may vary in meaning across racial/ethnic groups, the need to be more precise in defining key concepts, and the identification of sociocultural mediators.
  • 24 - Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System
    pp 478-498
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Research on well-being across the life course usually maps the average levels of depression and anxiety. The predominant type of distress shifts from active (anxiety and anger) to passive (depression) as person's age. This chapter describes the emotional trajectories of adulthood and the five views of age which includes maturity, decline, life-cycle stage, generation, and survival helps researchers understand why emotions change as people age. It also discusses the conditions and beliefs that change across adulthood, shaping the trajectories of emotions. A number of factors come together to produce the low and declining sense of control observed among old Americans. They represent many aspects of age, including physical decline; the life cycle of employment, earnings, and marriage; and the generational trends in education and women's employment. Emotional well-being in old age rests on economic, interpersonal, and physical well-being built throughout adult life.
  • 25 - Mental Health Care in Organizations and Systems
    pp 499-509
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter provides a chronological review of the literature on terrorism and mental health over the past few decades. Studies of Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or its symptoms dominate the literature on the mental health consequences of terrorism, but also studied are other types of mental disorders including acute stress disorder, depression, risk behaviors, use of health services, intervention or prevention, and in a few examples multiple outcomes. The chapter also describes the unique features of each of the major types of disorder associated with terrorism in the literature, starting with PTSD. Terrorism drains individuals' psychosocial resources similar to the way a destroyed home or workplace drains individuals' financial ones. In particular, terrorism may simultaneously result in the loss of hope, sense of control, belief in the government's ability to protect its citizens, and social bonds.
  • 27 - Consequences of Managed Care for Mental Health Providers
    pp 529-547
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter focuses on mental health utilization, commonly referred to as help-seeking. It focuses on the social processes involved in responding to mental health problems and if, when, and how individuals receive care from a wide range of people in the community-their friends and family, physicians, mental health specialists, alternative healers, the clergy, Web sites, and life coaches. The chapter considers how the fiscal and organizational arrangements seen with changes in the American health care system, particularly the expansion and more recent contraction of stringent managed care strategies, affect how mental health care services are allocated and what this means for people and professionals responding to illness. In the Network-Episode Model (NEM), individuals are seen as pragmatic users with commonsense knowledge and cultural routines who seek out and respond to others when psychiatric symptoms or unusual behavior occurs.
  • 28 - Mental Health and the Changing Context of HIV
    pp 548-570
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter examines some attempts by service providers and researchers to examine cultural issues in the treatment of ethnic minorities who have mental health problems. It begins with a review of interventions for ethnic minorities, what the empirical research suggests about these interventions, and some direction for future research. Rates of mental disorders have been generally used to indicate the need for professional care. Treatment studies tend to show that some ethnic minorities like African Americans are overrepresented in mental health facilities and other groups like Asian Americans are under represented. Empirical studies have found that ethnic, language, and cognitive match are related to a decrease in the dropout rate and an increase in utilization of services by ethnic minorities. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the perspectives that shape views about culture and mental health treatment.
  • 29 - Labeling and Stigma
    pp 571-588
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The mental health consumer/survivor movement is the human rights movement devoted to securing the rights and just treatment of persons identified as mentally ill. This chapter reviews trends in the struggles of activists to achieve the rights. After describing early conditions and moments in the movement, it examines the modern mental health consumer/survivor movement, focusing on the expatients and other advocates who fueled the modern movement, the reformist turn from antipsychiatry to consumerism, forces that bolstered or challenged the movement, subsequent challenges and more recent developments. In a political climate in which National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) had acquired considerable influence, Community Support Program (CSP) was losing power and had become less favorably positioned to promote the consumer/ survivor cause. National and state organizations advance their consumer/ survivor agendas, and every state has a mandated consumer office through which consumers and survivors directly engage with policy makers.
  • References
    pp 589-706
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Two prevailing beliefs held by the public (and many professionals) connect mental illness to the criminal justice system: first, a belief that deinstitutionalization has led to criminalization of mental illness, and second, a belief that mentally ill persons are dangerous and likely to commit crimes, especially violent crimes. This chapter reviews the available empirical evidence for these beliefs. Most studies of arrest of persons with mental illness have not controlled for comorbidities, despite existing research that shows that mentally ill persons with character disorders and substance abuse are much more likely to offend and have higher arrest rates than other mentally ill persons. The public's concern about coddling criminals and the subsequent release of not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) offenders into the community seems to be unwarranted. Mental health and social welfare systems with severely inadequate resources try to ameliorate the effects of such deleterious social conditions.

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