Interim Associate Provost for Academic Advising Jonathan Raskin’s multifaceted guide to psychopathology earns prestigious recognition

Interim Associate Provost for Academic Advising and Psychology Professor Jonathan Raskin’s book, “Psychopathology and Mental Distress: Contrasting Perspectives,” the second edition of which was published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Academic, was selected by the Association of College and Research Libraries’ “Choice” publication as one of its outstanding academic titles for 2024. 

“Raskin has accomplished what previously would have taken multiple high-end reference manuals to accomplish,” said the Choice reviewer R. E. Osbourne of Texas State University. “In fact, calling it a ‘text’ minimizes both its scope and its broad applicability. This will likely become a standard by which other psychopathology texts are compared.” 

Raskin was lauded for combining a biopsychosocial model with an international perspective in the latest edition of this textbook on psychopathology. His text outlines ways that psychopathology and mental distress are viewed from biological, psychological and sociocultural perspectives.  

Consistent with this idea, the book presents the well-known Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) as merely one method for conceptualizing mental distress. Readers are invited to “try on” different perspectives for size to explore how these perspectives help both professionals and the public make sense of the psychological difficulties that people experience. 

Choice is a publishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. Choice Outstanding Academic Titles represent the best in scholarly publishing, both print and digital. The list is highly selective. It contains roughly ten percent of some 5,000 works reviewed annually in “Choice.” 

“I’m absolutely delighted that the book has been recognized in this way,” said Jenna Steventon, Bloomsbury Academic’s Senior Publisher for Psychology. “This is very much deserved.” 

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