At present many are struggling to make sense of increasing rates of mental distress within different populations. Since the 1950s biological explanations of mental distress have risen to the fore within many psychiatric, medical and nursing training programmes. This rise has been accompanied by paradoxical effects among professionals and the general public – with apparently decreasing professional empathy in response to biological understandings, and increasing desire for public distance from those with psychotic experiences (Angermeyer et al. 2013; Lebowitz and Ahn 2014). Against this background, explorations of the social experience of mental distress serve to allow greater understanding of the experience of disorder in contemporary settings. This book, based on the proceedings from a conference of the same name hosted in Denmark, 2010, seeks to advance understanding of the concept of experiences of psychic distress as a manifestation, not solely of individual experience but as a more collective pathology of ‘civilisation’. The contents consist of a series of papers presented by various authors and edited by Keohane and Petersen into three overarching themes. The claim for a pathology of civilisation is clearly not uncontroversial and the opening section of the book sets out the thinking of conference contributors in relation to defining understanding and nomenclature. The second section presents a series of case studies considering the experience of varying forms of mental distress and the impact of societal change in recent decades on these phenomena. The book's closing section steps its analysis up to a higher order, considering the impact of social movements, for example the impact of biomedical interpretations of distress, on society. The authors' arguments describing the impact of societal change on the experience of individuals, and the pressures placed on them leading to a discharge of distress, are strong and this is represented in the depth of the case studies presented describing varying experiences of psychic distress. The question is raised though as to why the pathologies presented were chosen over others for consideration – is there much to be said and learnt perhaps regarding the increasing rate of stimulant prescription in children, or the rising rates of antipsychotic and mood stabilising medication prescriptions? The argument that it is civilisation itself that becomes pathological as a result of disordered processes within it versus the position that individuals within society experience distress secondary to societal pressures is more difficult to maintain, but still compelling when the discussions presented are considered. The book's central hypothesis that ‘various health-related symptoms are part of a radical change of our civilization’ (p.3) is however supported by the presented papers and warrants further exploration. The arguments presented within this book are not necessarily novel in their consideration of social pressure leading to psychic distress. However, in the current political climate their synthesis in this way is certainly timely and serves to provide an alternative perspective to a well-established debate within the field of clinical mental health practice. Because of these discussions, this book will prove interesting for clinicians as well as those with an academic interest in the social expression of mental distress. For clinicians the papers contained within will serve to underline the importance of considering the social environment around individuals who seek help and support in relation to their experiences. The message this book conveys is important: we can no longer continue to consider the experience of individuals alone, isolated from the groups, communities and societies that contain and constitute their experiences. In this regard the essays contained within serve as an introduction to a discussion. There are no solutions as yet, but the discussion needs to be heard.