Social (In)Justice and Mental Health, the newly published book edited by Dr. Ruth Shim and Dr. Sarah Vinson was recently reviewed by Sandra Steingard, M.D. Editor-in-Chief of Community Mental Health Journal, a peer-reviewed journal, calling it “a must read.”
After what appeared to be a long period of social justice discourse and wake-up calls for many Americans and people worldwide, Dr. Steingard deems this book “long overdue” as it addresses society’s failure to deliver on basic human rights, harming people with mental illness.
In this review affirms by stating, “My hope is that this book will quickly come to be considered required reading by clinicians, administrators, and students, including those who already understand the urgency of the problems we face as well as those who are just beginning to grapple with them.”
To read the full review, click here.
ABOUT COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL
Community Mental Health Journal is devoted to the evaluation and improvement of public sector mental health services for people affected by severe mental disorders, serious emotional disturbances and/or addictions.
Coverage includes:
- nationally representative epidemiologic projects
- intervention research involving benefit and risk comparisons between service programs
- methodology, such as instrumentation, where particularly pertinent to public sector behavioral health evaluation or research
Learn more: https://www.springer.com/journal/10597
ABOUT SOCIAL (IN)JUSTICE AND MENTAL HEALTH
Social justice entails equal access to liberties, rights, and opportunities, as well as care for the least advantaged members of society. The paradigm-shifting new book Social (In)Justice and Mental Health addresses the ways in which society’s failure to deliver on that humane ideal harms people with mental illness.
The editors, at the forefront of the effort to make psychiatry responsive to critiques of institutional racism, argue that in the United States, a perfect storm of unfair and unjust policies and practices, bolstered by deep-seated beliefs about the inferiority of some groups, has led to a small number of people having tremendous advantages, freedoms, and opportunities, while a growing number are denied those liberties and rights.
Mental health clinicians bear a special responsibility to be aware of these structural inequities, to question their own biases, to intervene on behalf of patients and their families, and to advocate for mental health equity. To that end, the book provides a framework for thinking about why these inequities exist and persist and provides clinicians with a road map to address these inequalities as they relate to racism, the criminal justice system, and other systems and diagnoses.
Learn more: https://www.sijmh.com
