Our first preface in 1993 emphasized that this book was A, not, The Sociology of Mental Health and Illness. Today, more than ever, it is quite a risk to write ‘The Sociology’ of anything. Moreover, as the wide-ranging references listed at the end of the book indicate, we continue to draw our material from sociology but also many other sources, including psychology and psychiatry. Sociological analyses of our topic are not offered only by sociologists. Since the previous edition was published in 1999, good examples of this point from other disciplines have appeared, including Richard Bentall’s Madness Explained (2003) and Christopher Dowrick’s Beyond Depression (2004) (from psychology and.
