Defines an approach to mental healthcare focused on achieving international equity in coverage, options and outcomes.

This is the definitive textbook on global mental health, an emerging priority discipline within global health, which places priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide.

This international survey defines mental health as a basic human right, and tracks the emergence of mental health prevention and promotion as a global priority. Locating mental illness within a cycle of negative causes and effects affecting human quality of life, the editors identify modern policy barriers to promotion/prevention initiatives, particularly the favoring of the biomedical health model by major stakeholders. The book’s selection of successful programs from diverse countries displays a lifespan approach, emphasizing the centrality of interdisciplinary educational settings in providing primary and secondary prevention and promotion interventions, and the ongoing fight against missing financial investigations, discrimination and stigma. Together, these papers make a forceful argument for rights- based responses to worldwide mental health needs as part of the commitment toward global human rights and long-term development goals. Included in the coverage: · Mental health priorities around the world. · Social determinants of mental health. · Mental health and stigma: aspects of anti-stigma interventions. · Promoting social and emotional wellbeing and responding to mental health problems in schools. · The promotion and delivery of mental health services in primary care settings. · Economic evaluation of mental health promotion and mental illness prevention. Bringing to the fore public health concerns that are too often marginalized, Global Mental Health is necessary reading for health professionals, health and clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, medical sociologists, and policymakers.

Global Mental Health provides an outline of the field of mental health with a particular focus on Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world. The book details evidence-based approaches being implemented globally and presents ongoing state of the art research on major mental disorders taking place in Latin America, including work being done on understanding Alzheimer’s, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and other psychoses. While supporting the initiative for building capacity of care in low income countries, the book warns about some of the potential risks related to the abuse of psychiatry, using examples from the past, focusing on early 20th century Spain.

Drawing on the authors’ experience in developing and implementing global mental health programs in crisis and development settings, A Guide to Global Mental Health Practice: Seeing the Unseen is designed for mental health, public health, and primary care professionals new to this emerging area. The guide is organized topically and divided into four sections that move from organizing and delivering global mental health services to clinical practice, and from various settings and populations likely to be encountered to special issues unique to global work. Case studies based around a central scene are threaded throughout the book to convey what global mental health work actually involves. Mental health professionals of all backgrounds, including social workers, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychologists, and psychiatrists, as well as public health professionals and community level medical professionals and mental health advocates will benefit from this engaging primer. It is the book for anyone committed to addressing mental health issues in a low resource or crisis-hit setting, whether international or domestic.

Over the course of the last decade, political and mental entities at large have embraced global mental health: the idea that psychiatric health is vital to improved quality of life. Physicians globally have implemented guidelines recommended by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 2007, thereby breaking down barriers to care and improving quality of life in areas where these practices have been implemented. Programs for training and education have expanded as a result. Clinicians benefit more from both local resources in some regions as well as in international collaboration and technological advancements. Even amidst all of these positive outcomes, clinicians still face some stumbling blocks. With worldwide statistics estimating that 450 million people struggle with mental, neuropsychiatric, and neurological disorders—25 percent of the world’s non-communicable disease burden—rising to these challenges prove to be no small feat, even in wealthy Western nations. Various articles and books have been published on global mental health, but few of them thoroughly cover the clinical, research, innovative, and social implications as they pertain to psychiatry; often, only one of these aspects is covered. A comprehensive text that can keep pace with the rapidly evolving literature grows more and more valuable each day as clinicians struggle to piece together the changes around the world that leave open the possibility for improved outcomes in care. This book seeks to boldly rectify this situation by identifying innovative models of service delivery, training, education, research funding, and payment systems that have proven to be exemplary in implementation and scalability or have potential for scalability. Chapters describe specific barriers and challenges, illuminating effective strategies for improved outcomes. This text is the first peer-reviewed resource to gather prestigious physicians in global mental health from around the world and disseminate their expertise in the medical community at large in a format that is updateable, making it a truly cutting-edge resource in a world constantly changed by medical, scientific, and technological advances. Innovations in Global Mental Health is the ultimate resource for psychiatrists, psychologists, primary care physicians, hospitalists, policy makers, and all medical professionals at the forefront of global mental health and its implications for the future.

While there is increasing political interest in research and policy-making for global mental health, there remain major gaps in the education of students in health fields for understanding the complexities of diverse mental health conditions. Drawing on the experience of many well-known experts in this area, this book uses engaging narratives to illustrate that mental illnesses are not only problems experienced by individuals but must also be understood and treated at the social and cultural levels. The book -includes discussion of traditional versus biomedical beliefs about mental illness, the role of culture in mental illness, intersections between religion and mental health, intersections of mind and body, and access to health care; -is ideal for courses on global mental health in psychology, public health, and anthropology departments and other health-related programs.

This book uses engaging narratives to illustrate that mental illnesses are not only problems individuals face but problems that need to be understood and treated globally at the social and cultural levels.

Mental illness occurs in all communities, regardless of social status, gender, race, or culture. Despite this, research in mental health historically has been biased towards Western-centric heterosexual male models of disease. Many models of service have excluded sexual and ethnic minorities and may not have been inclusive of different cultures or spiritual approaches. All of these factors may in turn isolate these communities and thus lead to an increased vulnerability to disease. This brief explores the diversity of cultural, ethnic, social, and gender perspectives on how to achieve better mental health care for societies across the globe. The authors emphasize diversity focusing on lifespan aspects, while weaving in social, racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender perspectives. They further expand their analysis by zeroing in on prominent determinants in global mental health care, including globalization, international migration, specific population idiosyncrasies, climate change, and political context. Finally, it includes novel neurobiological and biomedical approaches to treatment, and a suggestions of how those can be implemented from the perspective of diversity and gender inclusiveness. Diversity in Global Mental Health will be of great interest to experts and researchers in behavioral medicine, as well as practitioners and educators working in global mental health promotion and prevention of mental illness and related fields such as psychology, social policy, and public health.

In this volume, prominent anthropologists, public health physicians, and psychiatrists respond sympathetically but critically to the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH), which seeks to export psychiatry throughout the world. They question some of its fundamental assumptions: the idea that "mental disorders" can clearly be identified; that they are primarily of biological origin; that the world is currently facing an "epidemic" of them; that the most appropriate treatments for them normally involve psycho-pharmaceutical drugs; and that local or indigenous therapies are of little interest or importance for treating them. Instead, the contributors argue that labeling mental suffering as "illness" or "disorder" is often highly problematic; that the countries of South and Southeast Asia have abundant, though non- psychiatric, resources for dealing with it; that its causes are often social and biographical; and that many non-pharmacological therapies are effective for dealing with it. In short, they advocate a thoroughgoing mental health pluralism.