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A Local Critique of Global Mental Health

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Disability in the Global South

Abstract

The World Health Organization and the Movement for Global Mental Health are advocating to ‘scale up’ mental health services, with particular emphasis on increasing access to psychiatric drugs within the global South (Lancet Global Mental Health Group 2007; Patel et al. 2011). Amid these calls, others can be heard, from local and global movements of psychiatrised peoples: people globally who have been psychiatrically diagnosed and often subjected to ‘treatments’, including institutionalisation and/or medical or surgical interventions, sometimes administered forcibly.This chapter seeks to problematise Global Mental Health by questioning how a single model can claim to account for, and ‘treat’, psychosocial distress experienced globally, and specifically in contexts of persistent poverty and entrenched inequality. The chapter documents and explores localised ways of knowing and supporting people in distress through the work of survivor-led and disabled people’s organisations in the global South (with a specific focus on India). In mobilising the local to critique ‘global’ mental health, the chapter seeks to map possibilities for transnational advocacy in formulating resistance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, the TransAsia group of Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities participated in a regional workshop, ‘Transforming communities for Inclusion of Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities’, in May 2013 in Pune, supported by the Open Society Foundation and facilitated by the Bapu Trust.

  2. 2.

    We use the terms ‘user’ and ‘survivor’ here to refer to those who currently ‘use’ psychiatric interventions (often not by choice), and to those who have been psychiatrised (through psychiatric categories and/or interventions). We are also referring here to the local and global self-organising of psychiatrised peoples (and sometimes those who are not (yet) psychiatrised) into heterogeneous movements made up of people who are diversely situated in relation to psychiatry and have different priorities in their struggles, but who share a commitment to challenge psychiatric hegemony in all the areas of life into which it permeates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Sheffield, 388 Glossop Road, Sheffield, S10 2JA, UK

    China Mills

  2. Centre for Advocacy in Mental Health, Bapu Trust, Pune, 411 060, Maharashtra, India

    Bhargavi Davar

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  1. China Mills
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  2. Bhargavi Davar
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Correspondence to China Mills .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Global Disability Research, The Critical Institute, Attard, Malta

    Shaun Grech

  2. Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, New South Wales, Australia

    Karen Soldatic

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Mills, C., Davar, B. (2016). A Local Critique of Global Mental Health. In: Grech, S., Soldatic, K. (eds) Disability in the Global South. International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42488-0_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42488-0_28

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