Social Capital and Mental Health

Kwame McKenzie is Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Royal Free and University College Medical School. He is one of the founding members of the Social Capital Forum at King's College London and advises the World Bank on this subject. He is Assistant Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, having previously edited The Practitioner. Trudy Harpham is Professor of Urban Development and Policy at London South Bank University and Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research focuses on urban health in developing countries, including an international study of childhood poverty in Peru, Ethiopia, Vietnam and India.

• Foreword, Richard Wilkinson. Part 1: Theory and methods. 1. Meaning and uses of social capital in the mental health field, Kwame McKenzie and Trudy Harpham. 2. Social risk, mental health and social capital, Kwame McKenzie. 3. Systematic review of the methods used in studies of social capital and mental health, Mary de Silva. Part 2: International studies. 4. Ethnographic investigation of social capital and mental health in Gospel Oak, London, UK, Rob Whitley. 5. Social capital and quality of life and mental health in Maastricht, the Netherlands: The neighbourhood matters, Marjan Drukker, Charles Kaplan and Jim van Os. 6. Social capital and mental health in the urban south, USA: A quantitative study, Carey Usher. 7. Social capital and mental health of women living in informal settlements in Durban, South Africa, and Lusaka, Zambia, Liz Thomas. 8. Social capital and youth mental health in Cali, Columbia, Trudy Harpham, Emma Grant and Simon Snoxell. Part 3: Conclusion. 9. The state of the art, Kwame McKenzie. Index.

`Amid ongoing, often bitter debate as to whether social or material factors have the greater impact on public health, this is the first book to look at the research on social capital from a mental health perspective.It's an impressive collection, with international studies from the US, Columbia, South Africa and Holland, as well as challenging reflections on theory by the editors and a welcome systematic review of methodolody by Mary de Silva…In refusing to gloss over some uncomfortable contradictions in the research on social capital, Mckenzie and Harpham provide a welcome reminder that inequalities are important, whether interpreting social or material determinants of mental health.'