Global Mental Health

This emerging discipline, or the beginnings of an organised "movement",  is lead by academics trying to unify two agendas- identifying service gaps, and creating pressure for something to be done to fill these gaps. Although this is well meaning at the core, it is still problematic at the peripheries. At the extreme, they are trying to incorporate mental health to be synonymous to development. It is particularly interesting to me because it couples themes and issues from two of my papers this year that would otherwise not be in such proximity; globalisation, and mental health and public policy.

There are many tangential questions from which to start to unpack their overall motivations. How do they position themselves within the public health and mental health discourse? As an amalgamation between global public health, and mental health, is it too inter-disciplinary, or does the common purpose and interactions that it begins to articulate benefit from more a more focused and explicit research agenda? And also, inherent to these considerations is the tension between method and theory. In this case, it underlies both critique of its purpose and empirical methodology. This research does have a complicated mix of agendas and assessment of their historical origins is important for future trajectories.

Here, the idea of agency is key- immediately research is not a passive process, and there are inherent expectations of applicability. Therefore, the changes that the movement advocate, and the levers that are pulled, fits in somewhere along a broader framework that exists in the social sciences that have historical and philosophical origins. It's justification of its organisation and institutions is still very much underpinned by the The moral and political philosophies which western society, whether Hobbesian individualism, or even Keynesian ideas about the role of the state. In essence they focus on an idea of human capital in terms of different degrees of capacity. It is this that underlies  political and policy discussion, and in a sense also the interpretation of data that is used to justify our choices. How a human being is 'diagnosed' and 'treated', it situated within the complicated web of societal attitudes, and historical ideas.

Another way to critique this would be from a the perspective of the archaeology of knowledge and post-modern idea of a plurality of understandings and knowledge. The social-cultural space for 'therapy' to replace 'traditional' modes of treatment for coping with everyday life. Everything can be analysed through the lense of modern values- inherently based on rights, ideas of social justic, anti stigma campaigns, but how did this evolve from previously public health theories, and how are these different understandings negotiated and used.