Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health

Preface to the Second Edition.- Acknowledgements.- Chapter 1. The Sociology of Mental Health: Surveying the Field; Carol S. Aneshensel.- I. CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF MENTAL HEALTH AND ILLNESS.- Chapter 2. Listening to Voices: Patient Experience and the Meanings of Mental Illness; David A. Karp and Lara B. Birk.- Chapter 3. Mental Illness as Psychiatric Disorder; Martha L. Bruce amd Patrick J. Raue.- Chapter 4. The Medicalization of Mental Disorder; Peter Conrad and Caitlin Slodden.- Chapter 5. Public Beliefs about Mental Illness; Jason Schittker.- Chapter 6. The Sociological Study of Mental Illness:A Critique and Synthesis of Four Perspectives; Allan V. Horwitz.-II. METHODOLOGY.- Chapter 7. Issues in Mental Health Assessment; Galan E. Switzer, Mary Amanda Dew and Evelyn J. Bromet.- Chapter 8. Analyzing Associations between Mental Health and Social Circumstances; John Mirowsky.- III. THE SOCIAL DISTRIBUTION OF MENTAL HEALTH AND ILLNESS.- Chapter 9.  Overview of Descriptive Epidemiology of Mental Disorders; Ronald C. Kessler.- Chapter 10. Age, Aging and Mental Health; Kenneth F. Ferraro and Lindsay A. Rinaldo.- Chapter11. Social Stratification, Social Closure and Social Class as Determinants of Mental Health Disparities; Charles Muntaner, Edwin Ng, Christophe Vanroelen, Sharon Christ, and William W. Eaton.- Chapter 12. Social Stratification and Inequality; Jane D. McLeod.- Chapter 13. Race, Nativity, and Cultural Influences in the Sociology of Mental Health; Tony N. Brown, Katharine M. Donato, Mary Therese Laske, and Ebony M. Duncan.- Chapter 14. Gender and Mental Health; Sarah Rosenfield and Dawne Mouzon.- IV. SOCIAL ANTECEDENTS.- Chapter15. Social Stress in the 21st Century; Blair Wheaton, Shirin Montazer, Marisa Young, and Catherine Stuart.- Chapter 16. Current Issues and Future Directions in Research into the Stress Process; Leonard I. Pearlin and Alex Bierman.- Chapter 17. Social Relations, Social Integration, and social Suppoort; J. Blake Turner.- Chapter 18. Self,

Carol S. Aneshensel is Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences at the Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles.  She specializes in the fields of the sociology of mental health and medical sociology, with an emphasis on the social origins of stress and its impact on depression. Her work spans the life course from adolescence through advanced old age. Her most recent work examines the linkages between the socioeconomic stratification and racial/ethnic segregation of neighborhoods and mental health.  She has received the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for distinguished contributions to the sociological study of mental health and the Leo G. Reeder Award for distinguished contributions to medical sociology from the American Sociological Association. 

Jo C. Phelan is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Social Inequalities and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Her broad research focus is on social inequalities, particularly on the interplay between social structural conditions and social psychological processes in producing, maintaining or changing those inequalities. Her current research interests include socioeconomic inequalities as "fundamental causes" of inequalities in health and mortality; public conceptions of mental illness; and stigma, particularly stigma associated with mental illnesses.

Alex Bierman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary.  His research is broadly concerned with using mental health as a means to illustrate the importance of structural arrangements for individuals' lives.  His current research interests include examining how social statuses and a life course context intersect to shape the relationship between stressors and mental health.  An additional area of inquiry focuses on exploring the social and psychological mechanisms that may help to explain the