As part of their anti-stigma campaign, “Changing Minds,” the Royal College of Psychiatrists, have recently published a volume Every Family in the Land: Understanding Prejudice and Discrimination Against People with Mental Illness (Revised edition) edited by Arthur Crisp in 2004 for the Royal Society of Medicine Press. It includes chapters on people’s perceptions of the mentally ill (Kay Redfield Jamison has a piece on her experience with bipolar disorder in this section), the relation between stigma and models of psychopathology, the origins and history of stigma of the mentally ill, creativity and spirituality in mental disorder, strategies to counteract stigma, the law and mental illness, etc. I use this volume with my graduate students. It is quite a valuable resource for researchers and clinicians working with persons diagnosed with a severe mental illness. It helps one examine one’s own deeper thoughts/feelings on this topic. I highly recommend it.

Brian Koehler
New York University