This issue of Psychiatric Clinics, guest edited by Drs. Altha J. Stewart and Ruth Shim is entitled Achieving Mental Health Equity. This issue is one of four each year selected by our series consulting editor, Dr. Harsh Trivedi of Sheppard Pratt Health System. Topics in this issue include: The Business Case for Mental Health Equity; Shifting the Policy Paradigm to Achieve Equity; Clinical Considerations in an Equitable Mental Health Care System; Training Psychiatrists to Achieve Mental Health Equity; The Role of Organized Psychiatry; A Consumer and Family Perspective on mental health equity; as well as mental health equity for: Criminal Justice, Child and Adolescents, Addictions, Collaborative Care, and Community Psychiatry.

This issue of Psychiatric Clinics, guest edited by Drs. Altha J. Stewart and Ruth Shim is entitled Achieving Mental Health Equity. This issue is one of four each year selected by our series consulting editor, Dr. Harsh Trivedi of Sheppard Pratt Health System. Topics in this issue include: The Business Case for Mental Health Equity; Shifting the Policy Paradigm to Achieve Equity; Clinical Considerations in an Equitable Mental Health Care System; Training Psychiatrists to Achieve Mental Health Equity; The Role of Organized Psychiatry; A Consumer and Family Perspective on mental health equity; as well as mental health equity for: Criminal Justice, Child and Adolescents, Addictions, Collaborative Care, and Community Psychiatry.

In this issue, guest editors bring their considerable expertise to this important topic. Provides in-depth reviews on the latest updates in the field, providing actionable insights for clinical practice. Presents the latest information on this timely, focused topic under the leadership of experienced editors in the field. Authors synthesize and distill the latest research and practice guidelines to create these timely topic-based reviews.

In this issue of Psychiatric Clinics, guest editors Drs. Margie Balfour and Matthew Goldman bring their considerable expertise to the topic of Crisis Services. Crisis services are specially designed for people who need immediate, same-day access to psychiatric care. In this issue, top experts keep psychiatrists well-informed on mental health crisis intervention, including recent developments and major expansions to come. Contains 13 relevant, practice-oriented topics including equity/disparities: designing crisis services as a way to decriminalize mental illness; crisis contact centers: phone, chat and text-based crisis intervention; mass violence and crisis response; low-threshold crisis services for people experiencing homelessness and other structural barriers; and more. Provides in-depth clinical reviews on crisis services, offering actionable insights for clinical practice. Presents the latest information on this timely, focused topic under the leadership of experienced editors in the field. Authors synthesize and distill the latest research and practice guidelines to create clinically significant, topic-based reviews.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

The Social Determinants of Mental Health aims to fill the gap that exists in the psychiatric, scholarly, and policy-related literature on the social determinants of mental health: those factors stemming from where we learn, play, live, work, and age that impact our overall mental health and well-being. The editors and an impressive roster of chapter authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds provide detailed information on topics such as discrimination and social exclusion; adverse early life experiences; poor education; unemployment, underemployment, and job insecurity; income inequality, poverty, and neighborhood deprivation; food insecurity; poor housing quality and housing instability; adverse features of the built environment; and poor access to mental health care. This thought-provoking book offers many beneficial features for clinicians and public health professionals: Clinical vignettes are included, designed to make the content accessible to readers who are primarily clinicians and also to demonstrate the practical, individual-level applicability of the subject matter for those who typically work at the public health, population, and/or policy level. Policy implications are discussed throughout, designed to make the content accessible to readers who work primarily at the public health or population level and also to demonstrate the policy relevance of the subject matter for those who typically work at the clinical level. All chapters include five to six key points that focus on the most important content, helping to both prepare the reader with a brief overview of the chapter's main points and reinforce the "take-away" messages afterward. In addition to the main body of the book, which focuses on selected individual social determinants of mental health, the volume includes an in-depth overview that summarizes the editors' and their colleagues' conceptualization, as well as a final chapter coauthored by Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States, that serves as a "Call to Action," offering specific actions that can be taken by both clinicians and policymakers to address the social determinants of mental health. The editors have succeeded in the difficult task of balancing the individual/clinical/patient perspective and the population/public health/community point of view, while underscoring the need for both groups to work in a unified way to address the inequities in twenty-first century America. The Social Determinants of Mental Health gives readers the tools to understand and act to improve mental health and reduce risk for mental illnesses for individuals and communities. Students preparing for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) will also benefit from this book, as the MCAT in 2015 will test applicants' knowledge of social determinants of health. The social determinants of mental health are not distinct from the social determinants of physical health, although they deserve special emphasis given the prevalence and burden of poor mental health.