The Sociology of Mental Health

Abstract

Within American society, mental disorder is commonly understood as an attribute of the individual. The contributors to this handbook collectively articulate an alternative vision, one in which the individual experience of psychopathology is inextricably embedded within its constituents. This theme-the interface between society and the inward experience of its constituents-is developed here in a more encompassing manner than has been previously undertaken. Although this perspective may seem self-evident, especially in a handbook on the sociology of mental health, the widespread adoption of a medical model of aberrant states, especially by sociologists, has obscured the relevance of social organization and processes. Most of this handbook is devoted to the explanation of one elementary observation: Disorder is not uniformly distributed throughout society, but occurs more densely within some social strata than others. The most influential idea running through this book-the idea that connects work on gender, SES, race, ethnicity, age, and poverty-is that social group differences in disorder are somehow linked to corresponding differences in exposure to the social conditions that cause disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)