Gender and Mental Health

by Pauline Prior

Overview

Gender and Mental Health provides a critical introduction to the ways in which gender affects mental health experiences and mental health service use. The volume is unique in including a policy perspective and an overview-including a look at crime, the law, and service structures-of society's responses to mental disorders.
Recent research has challenged basic assumptions that women are more prone than men to mental disorders, and has highlighted the increasing visibility of men in psychiatric statistics in the twentieth century. Yet, gender differences continue to be intertwined with risk factors in socioeconomic conditions and in biased approaches to diagnosis and treatment.
Prior here examines the individual experiences of mental disorders for both men and women and explores a range of mental health policy issues including concepts of normality, trends in mental health care legislation and service delivery, the differing impacts of national mental health policies on women and on men, and changing views of disorders linked with sexual identity and orientation.
Based on up-to-date information from both the United States and Europe, this volume will be useful to a broad range of scholars and professionals in psychology, sociology, social policy, gender studies, social work, medicine, and law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814766750
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1999
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 8.50(d)

About the Author

Pauline M. Prior is Lecturer in Social Policy at The Queen's University of Belfast.

Table of Contents

	Preface and Acknowledgements	ix
1	Introduction	1
	Why write another book on gender and mental health?	2
	New knowledge	3
	Summary of contents	8
Part I	Mental Disorder
2	Defining Mental Disorder	15
	Legal definitions	16
	Medical definitions	19
	Alternative perspectives	24
	Culture and mental disorder	29
3	The Population at Risk	34
	Gender and prevalence	34
	Mental disorders associated with women	42
	Mental disorders associated with men	47
	Finding the population at risk	50
4	Approaches to Treatment	51
	Different perspectives	51
	Hospital care	54
	Community care	57
	Therapies within mainstream psychiatry	61
	Non-medical approaches	70
5	Gender and Normality	77
	Feminism	78
	The male perspective	82
	Sexuality	86
	Psychiatry and the gender debates	91
Part II	Mental Health Policy
6	Defining Mental Health Policy	99
	A conceptual framework	100
	Modelling the policy system	101
	Analysing policy processes	102
	Understanding decision-making	104
	The impact of ideologies	106
	Changing trends in health policy	110
7	Mental Health Services	116
	Recent trends	118
	Current services in Europe	120
	Current services in the USA	126
	Gender and the use of services	131
8	The Law and Mental Disorder	138
	The scope of mental health law	138
	Mental health law in Europe	144
	Mental health law in the USA	149
	A gendered impact?	155
9	Crime and Mental Disorder	158
	Is there a link?	158
	Gender and crime	163
	Services for offenders with mental disorders	168
	Inside 'special hospitals'	173
10	A Final Word	177
	Bibliography	181
	Name Index	194
	Subject Index	196