Anxiety may be the defining feeling of our current era, and though it affects many people on a deeply personal level, the last few years have also witnessed the rise of more communal feelings of dread and unknowing, problems that sometimes seem too bi

"Fascinating history . . . A passionate and well-informed study on the importance of improving inclusiveness in mental health evaluations." ― Kirkus ReviewsIn a clear, empathetic style, Jonathan Foiles, author of the critically acclaimed This City Is Killing Me, takes us through troubling examples of bias in mental health work. Placing them in context of past blunders in the history of psychiatry and the DSM, he looks closely at questions that lay...

Jonathan Foiles weaves together psychology and public policy, exploring the trauma underlying urbanization in a book hailed as "an urgent call for reform" ( Kirkus Reviews).When Jonathan Foiles was a graduate student in social work, he had to choose between specializing in either mental health or public policy. But once he began working, he found it impossible to tell the two apart. As he counseled poor patients from Chicago's South and West Sides, he real...

When Jonathan Foiles was a graduate student in social work, he had to choose between a mental health or policy track. But once he began working, he found it impossible to tell the two apart. While helping poor patients from the south side and west side of Chicago, he realized that individual therapy could not take into account the importance of unemployment, poverty, lack of affordable housing, and other policy decisions that impact the well-being of both individuals and communities.

Why are women more likely to be labeled borderline personalities? Is transphobia being treated as was homosexuality in the past? Has "protest psychosis," a term used to diagnose Black men during the civil rights era, simply been renamed schizoaffective disorder? How different is our current label of "intellectual disability" from the history of eugenics? What, in other words, does it mean to be diagnosed with a "mental illness"?In his clear, empathetic style, Jonathan Foiles, autho...