Mental Health and Mental Disorders: An Encyclopedia of Conditions, Treatments, and Well-Being. Edited by Len Sperry. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2016. 3 vols. Acid free $320.00 (ISBN: 978-1-4408-0382-6). Ebook available (978-1-4408-0383-3), call for pricing.
This three-volume set includes 875 entries focused on six broad areas: mental disorders and conditions, treatment, tests and assessment methods, common psychological terms and concepts, individuals and organizations, and popular and classic books and movies. It includes a wide variety of entries such as “Addiction,” “Jeffrey Dahmer,” “Hip-Hop Music,” “Carl Jung,” “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Support Groups,” “Transgender,” the “Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS),” and “Xanax.”
“Guide to Related Topics” arranges the entries for improved searching by topics such as “Books, Movies, Music, Internet, and Popular Culture,” “Concepts,” “Disorders,” “Drugs, Natural Remedies, and Other Substances,” “Legislation and Legal Issues,” “Mental Health Professionals, Positions, and Professional Topics,” “Organizations,” “People,” “Social Issues,” “Tests, Experiments, and Classifications,” and “Treatment.”
The section on classic books and movies seems to be a weakness. Each entry includes a brief synopsis of the work, and some entries include a section titled “Psychological Influence” that is often not related to psychology at all. For example, the “Psychological Influence” entry for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off includes information that the movie was successful, a classic teen movie, grossed over $70 million, and has an 84 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is interesting but not related to mental health or psychological influence. At the bottom of the entry we get closer with a mention of “see also: Depression in youth;” however, there is no mention of depression in the synopsis of the film other than a brief mention that Ferris is “unhappy.” In an entry for the film Risky Business, only a synopsis of the movie is included, with no mention of how this film relates to mental health and why it was chosen to be included in this encyclopedia.
The Recommended Resources section at the end of volume 3 provides readers with information on additional resources for a more complete understanding of the topics discussed in the encyclopedia.
Similar works include the Encyclopedia of Mental Health, 2nd ed. (Academic Press 2015) edited by Howard S. Friedman. However, Friedman’s work is much longer at two thousand pages and more expensive at nearly $1,300 for the Kindle version and more than $1,300 for the hardcover version on Amazon. In addition, the Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Health, 3rd ed., edited by Kristin Key (Gale 2012), includes five hundred topics. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries.—Rachael Elrod, Head, Education Library, University of Florida, Gainesville, Flordia