This is the first book which deals with a wide range of topics based on research by scholars in many parts of the Continent. The majority of the papers in this volume were read at the first international regional conference of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Mental Health, of the International Sociological Association. The papers focus on the widely shared concept of mental illness in a number of sub-groups in Africa, psychiatric epidemiology, the development of mental health serices, as well as on the attitudes of a variety of sub-groups to psychiatric disorder.