This book offers evidence-based clinical approaches for understanding disparities in the provision of mental-health services in the U.S. and other industrialized nations. Chapters address the availability and barriers to care among various ethnic populations and the roles of their cultures, languages, and religions as they affect diagnostic and treatment approaches. Issues related to special populations such as migrants, refugees, incarcerated individuals, and the homeless are discussed. The book also addresses issues related to gender, sexual orientation, and age. Brief sections on training, education, and policy will lay the foundation for assessing evidence-based approaches and outcomes in these diverse populations.

This book offers evidence-based clinical approaches for understanding disparities in the provision of mental-health services in the U.S. and other industrialized nations. Chapters address the availability and barriers to care among various ethnic populations and the roles of their cultures, languages, and religions as they affect diagnostic and treatment approaches. Issues related to special populations such as migrants, refugees, incarcerated individuals, and the homeless are discussed. The book also addresses issues related to gender, sexual orientation, and age. Brief sections on training, education, and policy will lay the foundation for assessing evidence-based approaches and outcomes in these diverse populations.

This handbook is the definitive resource for understanding current mental health policy controversies, options, and implementation strategies. It offers a thorough review of major issues in mental health policy to inform the policy-making process, presenting the pros and cons of controversial, significant issues through close analyses of data. Some of the topics covered are the effectiveness of various biomedical and psychosocial interventions, the role of mental illness in violence, and the effectiveness of coercive strategies. The handbook presents cases for conditions in which specialized mental health services are needed and those in which it might be better to deliver mental health treatment in mainstream health and social services settings. It also examines the balance between federal, state, and local authority, and the financing models for delivery of efficient and effective mental health services. It is aimed for an audience of policy-makers, researchers, and informed citizens that can contribute to future policy deliberations.

In the 1960s, policymakers and mental health experts joined forces to participate in President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. In her insightful interdisciplinary history, physician and historian Mical Raz examines the interplay between psychiatric theory and social policy throughout that decade, ending with President Richard Nixon's 1971 veto of a bill that would have provided universal day care. She shows that this cooperation between mental health professionals and policymakers was based on an understanding of what poor men, women, and children lacked. This perception was rooted in psychiatric theories of deprivation focused on two overlapping sections of American society: the poor had less, and African Americans, disproportionately represented among America's poor, were seen as having practically nothing. Raz analyzes the political and cultural context that led child mental health experts, educators, and policymakers to embrace this deprivation-based theory and its translation into liberal social policy. Deprivation theory, she shows, continues to haunt social policy today, profoundly shaping how both health professionals and educators view children from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse homes.