Regardless of the fate of national health care reform, public policy makers will have to make difficult and tragic choices about which health services are more or less important. This volume, the first comprehensive examination of setting mental health services priorities, systematically explores the history, ethics, and politics of setting priorities for public mental health services. Because mental health services have traditionally been given lower priority and less generous benefits than general health services, they form a striking case study for priority setting.

Written by mental health care practitioners and scholars, What Price Mental Health? explores the social factors that most influence attempts to set priorities; offers case studies at the state level; illustrates priorities at the federal level and in the private sector; and identifies the ethical criteria that must be applied in any attempt to set priorities.

This volume is conceptionally rich for those familiar with mental health care research, but written in a style understandable to the general reader. Policy makers will find the book useful in the on-going debates about mental health care. Psychologists, public health professionals, researchers and students of psychology, public policy and public health will find this study an absorbing and informative addition to the mental health field.