My encyclopedia articles hit the streets

For the past year or so I have been writing entries for a reference work. Here's the publisher's blurb.  

Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness: An A to Z Guide looks at recent reports that suggest an astonishing rise in mental illness and considers such questions as: Are there truly more mentally ill people now or are there just more people being diagnosed and treated? What are the roles of economics and the pharmacological industry in this controversy? At the core of what is going on with mental illness in America and around the world, the editors suggest, is cultural sociology: How differing cultures treat mental illness and, in turn, how mental health patients are affected by the culture.

In this illuminating multidisciplinary reference, expert scholars explore the culture of mental illness from the non-clinical perspectives of sociology, history, psychology, epidemiology, economics, public health policy, and finally, the mental health patients themselves.

I wrote the following articles:

• Board and Care Homes
• Compulsory Treatment
• Deinstitutionalization
• Disability
• Health Insurance and Mental Health
• Medicaid and Medicare
• Patient Activism
• Prevention
• Race and Ethnic Groups, American
• Social Security

The book is now available from Sage Publications. Learn more here.

It's always a treat to see your work in print. My first contribution to a reference work was when I first graduated from law school - it was a chapter on handicap discrimination for an employment law book.