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edited by Carol S. Aneshensel, PhD, and Jo C. Plelan, PhD, 628 pp, $130, ISBN 0-306-46069-6, New York, NY, Kluwer/Plenum, 1999.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2001;58:885-886.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Drs Aneshensel and Plelan have edited an encyclopedic handbook reviewing the current status of the sociology of mental health, a topic that has been underrepresented in the psychiatric literature in recent years. As no comprehensive review of this volume is possible, we focus on 3 questions: (1) What are the key organizing principles for the handbook? (2) What are the themes that order the selected topics discussed in the 28 chapters in the book? (3) What are the implications of this volume for the future of inquiry into how the social environment effects our understanding of mental health?

In the introduction, the editors provide an organizing principle: "Most of this handbook is devoted to the explanation of one elementary observation: disorder is not uniformly distributed throughout society, but occurs more densely within some social strata than others." They also provide a related organizing principle: "The most influential idea running throughout . . . [Full Text of this Article]