Books About Issues in Mental Health 

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Amador, X.  I am not sick.  I don’t need help! Helping the seriously mentally ill accept treatment.  Peconic, NY: Vida Press, 2000.

 This book addresses the difficult issue of delivery of mental health services to seriously mentally ill individuals who may resist or not see the need for such treatment.  It offers straightforward, common-sense strategies for engaging individuals in their treatment rather than imposing treatment on them.  It is based both upon the personal experiences of the author as a sibling of someone diagnosed with schizophrenia and his expertise as a leading researcher on the issue of insight and awareness.

Fink, Paul & Tasman, Alan (Editors). Stigma and Mental Illness. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, 1992.

This book contains a series of papers that came out of a 1989 American Psychiatric Association annual meeting, the theme of which was "Overcoming Stigma." The papers discuss societal, historical, and institutional issues of stigma and include narratives from people with mental illnesses, as well.

Grob, G.N. (1994). The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill. New York: The Free Press.

This is a comprehensive history of the treatment of the mentally ill in America. It begins with a look at Colonial America, to the development of mental hospitals to deinstitutionalization, and finally to community care. He also traces the changes in the psychiatric profession during this time, and concludes with a discussion of how there are still many mentally ill people who have not found help, but who need it.

        Kay Jamison, author of the national bestseller, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and
        Madness, examines the phenomenon of suicide.  Dr. Jamison uses both data and powerful
        examples to convincingly demonstrate how suicide represents the preventable loss of thousands of
        lives each year.  She discusses factors--biological, psychiatric, and sociocultural--that contribute to
        suicide and points out the remarkable lack of attention currently given to this common killer.
 

Jamison, Kay Redfield. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness & the Artistic Temperament. Simon & Schuster, 1993.

        The author of a best-selling account of her own manic-depressive illness and co-author of a
        well-respected medical text on the illness, Dr. Jamison tackles the question of the possible
        relationship between manic-depressive illness and artistic creativity.  She provides both reviews of
        the research and theoretical literature on this topic and examples of numerous well-known artists
        with apparent manic-depressive tendencies.

Johnson, Ann Braden. Out of Bedlam: The Truth About Deinstitutionalization. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

The author, a clinical social worker, describes the history of deinstitutionalization and the forces that shaped it. She also discusses the fragmentation and resultant inefficiencies of the current mental health system that allows people with severe mental illnesses to fall through the cracks.

Mr. Kelly, who is both a lawyer and a person who has himself experienced mental illness, outlines clearly the rules and principles that define psychiatric malpractice and provides delatiled accounts of actual court cases where malpractice was at issue. These cases are both interesting in themselves, sometimes involving surprising outcomes, and help to make clearer the principles of malpractice that Kelly elucidates.

Leff, J. & Warner, R. (2006). Social Inclusion of People with Mental Illness. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Developed countries have made a major shift in the focus of care for mentally ill people from mental hospitals to community care; however, the individuals are not being fully integrated into their communities partly due to their diagnoses and partly due to the stigmatizing and discriminating attitudes of the public. This book analyzes these barriers and suggests ways of dismantling them.

Marsh, D.T. & Dickens, R.M. (1997). Troubled Journey: Coming to Terms with the Mental Illness of a Parent or Sibling. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.

This book explores the nature of mental illness focusing on Schizophrenia, major depression, and manic depression. It provides family members with tools to overcome the devastating effects on their lives.

Torrey, E. Fuller. Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.

Torrey, a well-known researcher and spokesperson on issues related to schizophrenia, writes about the failures of care that have led to increasing numbers of people with serious mental illnesses in prisons or homeless on the streets.
 

Wahl,O. F. Telling Is Risky Business: Mental Health Consumers Confront Stigma. NJ: Rutgers University, 1999.

 

This book reports the results of a national survey in which mental health consumers were asked about their personal experiences of stigma and discrimiation.  Consumers tell, in their own words, how they found themselves avoided, rejected, and turned down for jobs, housing, and other opportunities.  They also discuss the impact of hearing and seeing themselves depicted in negative ways and talk about how they have coped with stigma.  For more information about the book, click on the title above.

Whitaker, R. (2002). Mad in America. New York: Basic Books.

Mad in America shows how medical therapy has been used to silence patients and dull their minds, and how drug companies have skewed the results of their studies in an effort to prove the effectiveness of the drug. Whitaker raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be insane, and what we value most about the human mind.