The geography of mental health.

This Editorial takes a social science perspective of the geography of mental health, drawing upon the work of professional geographers with an interest in mental health and mental health care service provision. The academic discipline of Geography is broadly defined as "the study of the earth's surface as the space within which the human population lives" (Haggett, 1990). This all-inclusive definition, which basically includes everything that occurs both in the natural and human world, often results in the allegation that professional geographers are basically 'jack of all trades, and master of none!' However, in this Editorial I aim to demonstrate that geographers actually have much to offer to mental health research, both in terms of their social science research expertise and their particular 'geographical' view of the world. I hope to illustrate the benefits of including a geographical perspective in mental health services research to assist us in studying both the spatial patterns of mental illhealth, and the geographical distribution of mental health services and facflities at different spatial scales (local, regional, national, global).