This paper critically examines some of the assumptions and politics which underlie the global mental health (GMH) movement; and explores the issue of cultural awareness within western psychiatric thinking and practice. The way distress is labelled has a range of consequences for the individual, their family and society, as well as those who may control or negotiate the descriptors used, the act...

Advancing the opinion that global mental health supersedes public and international levels and deals with an integrative approach, this paper elaborates some of the implications of a differential ethics theory as outlined by H.M. Sass. Rejecting the extremes of moralizing generalizations and narrow scientific stances, it considers the need for cultural competence and praxis-relevant thinking in...

Background Global mental health (GMH) advocates for access to and the equitable provision of mental health care. Although the treatment gap is a useful construct to measure access and equitability of care, it fails to communicate the real-life consequences of the treatment gap and the urgent need to address care disparities. Objective The aim of this article is to present a perspective on the p...

A range of evidence-based, cost-effective interventions can be implemented in parenting, at schools, at the workplace and in older age to promote mental health and well-being. Such programmes need to be supplemented with actions to build mental health capital and promote resilience to manage and cope with the global risks that face humankind over the coming years. Actions need to connect mental...

This article charts the historical development of the discipline of global mental health, whose goal is to improve access to mental health care and reduce inequalities in mental health outcomes between and within nations. The article begins with an overview of the contribution of four scientific foundations toward the discipline's core agenda: to scale up services for people with mental disorde...

Using the metrics of the World Health Organisation, the Global Burden of Disease Study has found that mental health difficulties are currently the leading cause of disability in developed countries [1]. Projections also indicate that the global burden of mental health difficulties will continue to rise in the coming decades. The human and economic costs of this trend will be substantial. In thi...

4 years ago, The Lancet published a Series of articles highlighting the global health crisis due to an astonishingly large treatment gap: up to nine of ten people with a mental health problem do not receive even basic care in some countries. The Series showed that this gap was not due to insuffi cient evidence about the eff ect of mental health problems or their eff ective treatment, but to a r...