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.

The second volume on stigma that I would highly recommend is On the Stigma of Mental Illness: Practical Strategies for Research and Social Change edited by Patrick W. Corrigan in 2005 for the American Psychological Association. I heard Dr. Corrigan speak at our ISPS international conference in Washington DC in 1994. If I recall correctly, he was presenting data demonstrating how much persons with serious mental illness value their experience in psychotherapy (research I think we in ISPS could do). He is currently at the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, University of Chicago. I think it would be very good if we could get Dr. Corrigan more involved with our ISPS-US group.

Brian Koehler
New York University