Mental Ills for All

Abstract

MGMH was created by reassembling psychiatric epidemiology, health economics, health systems research, evidence-based therapeutics, lay awareness, human rights, and sustainable development into an set of policy instruments. I retrace the emergence and crisis of three “pillars” of MGMH: epidemiology, economics of minds and moods, and the gap in treatment provision. I argue that MGMH remains limited by its strategic ignorance of flaws in the data, of paradoxical relations between economic development and health improvement, and of how people actually seek help in low income countries. I conclude by arguing that MGMH policies are bound to fail if they fail to reckon with the contradictions in its approach.