Mental Health in Later Life is a significant and timely book. It will be welcomed by those concerned with issues around mental health and well-being not only in later life but throughout the life course. Given growing life expectancy and the potential for complex mental and physical health problems the issues raised in this book are of increasing relevance to academics, policy makers, health and social care professionals and students in a range of disciplines.

What readers will find particularly interesting is the lens through which issues are viewed and analysed – not a medical or clinical perspective but one informed by a fusion of critical social gerontology, the life course and inequalities perspectives. A commitment to social justice and to engaging with the lived experiences and voices of older people are also prominent dimensions of the discourse. These are themes that resonate with an earlier Policy Press series, Ageing and the Life Course.

Milne takes us on a journey starting with her own interest in the topic as a social worker in the 1990s. These experiences alongside those of a long-standing gerontological researcher and social work lecturer offer a particularly rich critical optic on the multiplicity of issues that impact on mental health in later life.

A book which influenced my own thinking on mental health in later life as a social worker was Past Trauma in Late Life European Perspectives on Therapeutic Work with Older People edited by Hunt, Marshall and Rowlings. It analysed the lives of older people who had experienced trauma in early life, including individual experiences of the Holocaust as well as the resurfacing of psychic pain in dementia. This was published in 1977 and many of the themes are picked up in Milne's book. We have come a considerable distance since 1977 but much remains to be done to understand the causes of, and prevent, mental ill health in later life. Key challenges include highlighting the influence of issues that are life course embedded such as gender, socio-economic status and childhood adversity; also to reframe factors such as ‘resilience’ as a feature of a socio-cultural context rather than a feature of an individual. Establishing connections between what has gone before in a person's life and mental health in later life is also key to appreciating what needs to change to improve outcomes and promote mental health and well-being.