Universal mental health: re-evaluating the call for global mental health

Das, Anindya; Rao, M. Govinda

doi:10.1080/09581596.2012.700393

Cited by 61 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Significant advances have been made in identifying targets and strategies for research Patel, Boyce, Collins, Saxena, & Horton, 2011) and developing packages of interventions (Mari, Razzouk, Thara, Eaton, & Thornicroft, 2009;Patel, Simon, Chowdhary, Kaaya, & Araya, 2009;Patel & Thornicroft, 2009). Despite the efforts to build a solid scientific foundation for GMH, notably in the Lancet Global Mental Health Group series of articles published between 2007 and 2011 (Patel et al, 2008Prince et al, 2007), there continues to be controversy and debate about the knowledge base (Summerfield, 2008(Summerfield, , 2012, as well as the appropriate methods for establishing priorities, research themes and approaches, and modes of developing and/or adapting interventions in global mental health (Das & Rao, 2012;Fernando, 2012;S. Fernando, 2014;Mills, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a new architecture for global mental health

Kirmayer

Pedersen

2014

Transcult Psychiatry

245

201

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Current efforts in global mental health (GMH) aim to address the inequities in mental health between low-income and high-income countries, as well as vulnerable populations within wealthy nations (e.g., indigenous peoples, refugees, urban poor). The main strategies promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other allies have been focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based practices that can be scaled up through task-shifting and other methods to improve access to services or interventions and reduce the global treatment gap for mental disorders. Recent debates on global mental health have raised questions about the goals and consequences of current approaches. Some of these critiques emphasize the difficulties and potential dangers of applying Western categories, concepts, and interventions given the ways that culture shapes illness experience. The concern is that in the urgency to address disparities in global health, interventions that are not locally relevant and culturally consonant will be exported with negative effects including inappropriate diagnoses and interventions, increased stigma, and poor health outcomes. More fundamentally, exclusive attention to mental disorders identified by psychiatric nosologies may shift attention from social structural determinants of health that are among the root causes of global health disparities. This paper addresses these critiques and suggests how the GMH movement can respond through appropriate modes of community-based practice and ongoing research, while continuing to work for greater equity and social justice in access to effective, socially relevant, culturally safe and appropriate mental health care on a global scale.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a new architecture for global mental health

Kirmayer

Pedersen

2014

Transcult Psychiatry

245

201

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“…A review of the trials on treatment and prevention of ‘mental disorders’ in LAMICs, cited in an article by Patel and others (), shows that 80 per cent of the trials for depression were for psychopharmaceuticals alone. Das and Rao () point out that this reflects a bias in the research agenda, particularly when we attend to research where pharmacological and psychological interventions have been found to be equally efficacious (Casacalenda and others, ). Furthermore, the non‐publication of trials leads to an erroneous evidence base and to potentially harmful treatment decisions, skewed when data are often not published because pharmaceutical industry sponsors withhold negative results that would damage the marketing of their products (Whittington and others, ).…”

Section: What Counts As Evidence?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychotropic Childhoods: Global Mental Health and Pharmaceutical Children

Mills

2013

Children & Society

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While the World Health Organization calls to ‘scale up’ access to psychotropic drugs for children in the global South, research from the global North has found that long‐term use of psychotropic drugs may be at best ineffective, or at worst harmful. Questioning what counts as evidence within the Movement for Global Mental Health, this article maps the physical, psychological and sociopolitical effects of increasingly global psychotropic interventions into children's lives. This psychiatrisation will be read alongside colonisation, leading to the uncomfortable question of whether every child should have the right to a psychotropic childhood.

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“…According to the Gates Foundation (2010), global mental health research obtains ' very large [fi nancial] contributions ... [from] the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the pharmaceutical industry, and other funders ' (p. 14); and activities of the MGMH are clearly supported by the American National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) (Collins et al, 2011). But the approach of the MGMH has been criticized both in the developed world and LMICs mainly because it promotes the indiscriminate application of western ideologies around mental health and ill-health, and opens the doors to marketing of tranquillizers and anti-depressants in LMICs (Das & Rao, 2012;Fernando, 2011;Read, 2012;Shukla et al, 2012;Summerfi eld, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Globalization of psychiatry – A barrier to mental health development

Fernando

2014

International Review of Psychiatry

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The concept of globalization has been applied recently to ways in which mental health may be developed in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), sometimes referred to as the 'Third World' or developing countries. This paper (1) describes the roots of psychiatry in western culture and its current domination by pharmacological therapies; (2) considers the history of mental health in LMICs, focusing on many being essentially non-western in cultural background with a tradition of using a plurality of systems of care and help for mental health problems, including religious and indigenous systems of medicine; and (3) concludes that in a post-colonial world, mental health development in LMICs should not be left to market forces, which are inevitably manipulated by the interests of multinational corporations mostly located in ex-colonizing countries, especially the pharmaceutical companies.

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Universal mental health: re-evaluating the call for global mental health

Cited by 61 publications

References 50 publications

Toward a new architecture for global mental health

Toward a new architecture for global mental health

Psychotropic Childhoods: Global Mental Health and Pharmaceutical Children

Globalization of psychiatry – A barrier to mental health development

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