Engendering a monoculture of the mind: implications for mental health policy development in Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT The contextualization of mental health in a medical context in the age of neoliberalism within a Northern disciplinary context has been generalized to the global South through health management. Though many cultural and social idiosyncrasies shape the understanding of mental health in Saudi Arabia, it has been well documented that, by far, the most decisive influence is religion. Muslim beliefs predominantly structure every aspect of life, including ways of dealing with pathology and stress. Critical discourse theory and post-colonial hybridity theory can help integrate local discourses to alter the “discursive fabric” of mental health and subsequent policy initiatives.