Sociological insights on mental health and distress / Teresa L. Scheid with S. Megan Smith.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part 1. Understanding mental health problems -- What does it mean to have a mental health problem? -- What are the sources of mental health problems? -- Assessing mental health and distress -- Part 2. Unpacking the relationships between stress, social supports, and mental health -- The stress universe -- Social relationships and social supports -- Understanding suicide and prevention -- Part 3. Structural sources of mental distress -- Social inequality -- Intersectionality and mental health -- Stigma as a fundamental cause -- Part 4. The complexities of care -- Mental health care and treatment -- Cycles of mental health care -- Dilemmas of care.

"Sociological Insights on Mental Health and Distress provides a readable, accessible, undergraduate level textbook which seeks to help students understand the important role that social factors play in understanding mental health and distress. Mental distress is both a personal trouble and a public issue, to use terms introduced by C. Wright Mills in his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination. Mills argued that our individual problems must be understood within the context of a given society, within a given historical period. We utilize the larger conceptual framework of the Sociological Imagination, examining the connections between the individual experience of mental health problems, the social and structural sources of mental health issues, and the larger cultural and historical context. Our goal is to introduce a wide range of students to the insights sociologists offer into the social sources of our mental health problems"-- Provided by publisher.

English.