The movement for global mental health: critical views from South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Critiques of psychiatric knowledge and practise have raised several concerns relating to: identification of diagnostic criteria, classification of distinct clinical entities, holistic understandings of causation, ‘legitimate’ treatment modalities, and claims to a universal symptomatology and nosology. This timely volume contributes to these longstanding debates and reminds us about all that is at stake if ‘mainstream’ psychiatric treatment and services are ‘universalised’, or perhaps more appropriately, ‘globalised’. As the contributors, including anthropologists, sociologists, public health professionals, historians, and clinical psychiatrists point out, this is indeed the primary aim of the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH). The book is divided into four broad themes: Critical Histories, Limits of Global Mental Health, Alternatives and Afterwords. The conceptually rich introduction covers good ground as it defamiliarises taken for granted assumptions about mental disorders that the MGMH tends to accept uncritically. Each chapter addresses certain problematic assumptions about causation, treatment and pervasiveness of mental disorders.