BACKGROUND This paper outlines stakeholder views on environmental barriers that prevent people who live with psychosocial disability from participating in mental health policy development in South Africa. METHOD Fifty-six semi-structured interviews with national, provincial and local South African mental health stakeholders were conducted between August 2006 and August 2009. Respondents inclu...

The article is meant to stimulate debate about the social and historical determinants that shape the construction of public mental health policy within the context of the Brazilian family. Current policies have emphasized the family as a strategic target of initiatives aimed at social transformation, with the intervention of different actors, including psychologists. An examination of some idea...

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), formed in 2001, turned national attention toward the serious mental health consequences of the country's 20-year internal armed conflict. The TRC prioritized reparations in mental health, using a legal justification that provided victims-survivors of the war with a rights-based framework for demanding that the public sector attend to their...

A sample (n = 124) of schizophrenic patients from a defined catchment area of the city os S. Paulo, Brazil, who had been consecutively admitted to hospital, was assessed for psychopathological status and social adjustment levels. Sociodemographic, socio-economic and occupational characteristics were recorded: almost 30% of the subjects had no occupation and received no social benefit, more than...

BACKGROUND Scientific knowledge is a fundamental tool for making informed health policy decisions, but the link between health research and public policy decision-making is often missing. This study aims to identify and prioritize a national set of research gaps in mental health. METHODS A multi-approach method to identify gaps in knowledge was developed, including (1) document analysis and i...

The use of digital technologies in the management of mental illness, and more generally in the promotion of well-being and mental health, has received much recent attention and is a focus of current health policy. We conducted a narrative review to explore the opportunities and risks of digital technologies in mental healthcare specifically for people with intellectual disability, a sometimes m...

This study explored the use of the four major Norwegian mental-health-related online discussion forums; who participate, why, and what implications use may have. The objective was to provide a basis for proposing relevant research questions and issues for public policy attention. A total of 492 responses to a web-based questionnaire were received. The respondents, predominantly women (78%) in t...

The UK scientific community is rightly concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on UK science. These concerns are particularly pertinent for mental health research, which is chronically underfunded in comparison to research on physical health conditions. The EU is one of the largest funders of mental health research in the world, with the UK clearly benefitting from this because of its stro...