Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Stephen Hinshaw's "The Mark of Shame"

Stephen Hinshaw was a Harvard premed student when his father, a philosophy professor at the Ohio State University, first confided in him about his long struggle with mental illness.

That revelation was followed by a shift in career focus for the son -- Hinshaw is now Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley -- and, eventually, a book, The Years of Silence are Past: My Father’s Life with Bipolar Disorder.

Now he has just published a new book, The Mark of Shame: Stigma and Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change.

Read the publisher's description of the book and check out the author's account of how the Page 69 Test serves it.

Among the advance praise for The Mark of Shame:
"Everyone needs to understand the pervasiveness of stigma, its effects and how it may be countered. This splendid book provides much the best discussion of the issues--being empirically solid but also personally compassionate, as well as realistic in its expectations. It is also a very good read."
--Professor Sir Michael Rutter, Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry
Hinshaw's work focuses on developmental psychopathology, with particular emphasis on (a) peer and family relationships in children with externalizing disorders, (b) neuropsychological risk factors for and correlates of psychopathology, (c) comparisons and combinations of pharmacologic and psychological interventions for children with ADHD, (d) assessment and evaluation, (e) conceptual and definitional issues in the field, and (f) stigma and mental disorder. He has directed summer research camps and conducted longitudinal studies for boys (and, recently, for girls) with ADHD and associated disorders for over 20 years.

In addition to The Years of Silence are Past and The Mark of Shame, he is the author of Attention Deficits and Hyperactivity in Children as well as over 170 articles, chapters, and reviews on child psychopathology.

The San Francisco Chronicle profiled Hinshaw in 2003.

Read a recent Q & A with Hinshaw.

Visit Hinshaw's faculty page at Berkeley and view his curriculum vitae.

--Marshal Zeringue