The Social Determinants of Mental Health

We have entered a new era of public health, with its needed attention to social determinants, population health, and delivery system reconfiguration. Fossilized practice and policy habits and vested interests in the status quo can jeopardize what progress we can achieve. But wise voices, like those of Drs. Compton and Shim, are emerging. If we take the time to read and listen to them we can generate the will to succeed. Lloyd I. Sederer, MD, Medical Director, NYS Office of Mental Health, Adjunct Professor, Columbia/Mailman School of Public Health

The bookprovides a foundation of knowledge on the social and environmental underpinnings of mental health and mental illnesses for clinical and policy decision making, with a goal to improve the mental health of individuals across diverse communities and the mental health of the nation.

The Social Determinants of Mental Health aims to fill the gap that exists in the psychiatric, scholarly, and policy-related literature on the social determinants of mental health: those factors stemming from where we learn, play, live, work, and age that impact our overall mental health and well-being. The editors and an impressive roster of chapter authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds provide detailed information on topics such as discrimination and social exclusion; adverse early life experiences; poor education; unemployment, underemployment, and job insecurity; income inequality, poverty, and neighborhood deprivation; food insecurity; poor housing quality and housing instability; adverse features of the built environment; and poor access to mental health care.

This thought-provoking book offers many beneficial features for clinicians and public health professionals:

• Clinical vignettes are included, designed to make the content accessible to readers who are primarily clinicians and also to demonstrate the practical, individual-level applicability of the subject matter for those who typically work at the public health, population, and/or policy level.
• Policy implications are discussed throughout, designed to make the content accessible to readers who work primarily at the public health or population level and also to demonstrate the policy relevance of the subject matter for those who typically work at the clinical level.
• All chapters include five to six key points that focus on the most important content, helping to both prepare the reader with a brief overview of the chapter's main points and reinforce the "take-away" messages afterward.
• In addition to the main body of the book, which focuses on selected individual social determinants of mental health, the volume includes an in-depth overview that summarizes the editors' and their colleagues' conceptualization, as well as a final chapter coauthored by Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States, that serves as a "Call to Action," offering specific actions that can be taken by both clinicians and policymakers to address the social determinants of mental health.

The editors have...read more...