Current Interests

Kim Hopper is a medical anthropologist who works as a Research Scientist at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, where he co-directs the Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health. He also lectures at the Columbia University Schools of Public Health and Law. Since 1979, he has done ethnographic and historical research on psychiatric care and on homelessness, chiefly in New York City. Active in homeless advocacy efforts since 1980, he served as President of the National Coalition for the Homeless from 1991-1993. He is author of the forthcoming Reckoning with Homelessness (Cornell University Press), a stocktaking of two decades of research, advocacy and theoretical work in that field. His current research interests include the reconfiguration of public mental health (the so-called "de facto" system in place), long-term cross-cultural follow-up studies of psychotic disorder, modalities of coercion, and dimensions of recovery and support in severe mental illness.

Publications

Hopper, K. (in press) Reckoning with Homelessness: An Anthropological Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Hopper, K., Harrison, G. Janca, A. and Sartorius, N. (eds.) (in press) Recovery from Schizophrenia -- An International Perspective. (A Report from the WHO-Collaborative Project, The International Study of Schizophrenia). Psychosocial Press, Madison, CT.

Harrison, G., Hopper, K., Craig, T., Laska, E., Siegel, C., Wanderling, J. et al. (2001) Recovery from psychotic illness: A 15- and 25-year international follow-up study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 178:506-517.

Shinn, M., Baumohl, J., and Hopper, K. (2001) The prevention of homelessness revisited. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (ASAP) 1: 95-127.

Steadman, H.J., Dennis, D.L., Gounis, K., Hopper, K., Roche, B., Swartz, M., Robbins, P. (2001). Assessing the New York City Involuntary Outpatient Commitment Program, Psychiatric Services 52: 330-336.

Hopper, K. (in press) In the employ of the state: Applying anthropology in Caesar's realm. Human Organization.

Hopper, K., Harrison, G., and Wanderling, J. (in press) Course and outcome in ISoS, In Hopper, K., Harrison, G. Janca, A. and Sartorius, N. (eds.) Recovery from Schizophrenia -- An International Perspective. (A Report from the WHO-Collaborative Project, The International Study of Schizophrenia). Psychosocial Press, Madison, CT., pp. 41-70.

Hopper, K., Harrison, G., Sartorius, N., and Wiersma, D. (in press) Conclusion. In Recovery from Schizophrenia -- An International Perspective. (A Report from the WHO-Collaborative Project, The International Study of Schizophrenia). Psychosocial Press, Madison: CT., pp. 571-583.

Hopper, K. (in press) Interrogating culture in the WHO studies of schizophrenia, in The Edge of Experience: Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity, eds. R. Barrett and J. Jenkins, Cambridge University Press.

Hopper, K. (2001) Review of M. Duneier, Sidewalk, in Social Service Review 75: 173-177.

Hopper, K. (2001) Commentary: On the transformation of the moral economy of care, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 25: 473-484.