This is a guest post from Dr Philip Kerrigan, co-editor of Mental Health: Pasts, Current Trends and Futures
The Centre for Global Health Histories has
co-produced a new book with the University of York’s Centre for Chronic
Diseases and Disorders (now the Centre for Future Health) entitled Mental
Health: Pasts, Current Trends and Futures (published by Orient
BlackSwan).
Securing better mental health for everyone
around the world is one of the greatest current challenges in global public
health. Historically and to this day mental disability and illness has been
closely linked to social and political stigmatisation, which has led this
specialism to remain under-provisioned and under-represented in health
structures.
Advancing the mental health of the world’s
population is hence a challenge that requires multi-faceted solutions,
cooperation between many stakeholders, and a fulsome understanding of the
political, social, economic and cultural determinants of health. Mental illness
is also in many cases not a condition existing on its own but rather one which
connects to a wider range of afflictions (for example, post-epidemic disease
community support, as has been seen in relation to Ebola in western Africa).
This new work offers a number of carefully
researched but accessible case studies from different areas of the world and
across periods in time which shed light on some of the many motivations and
innovations in the field of mental health, and analyse the range of barriers
and opportunities that continue to impact on this complex area of work. Each
one is complemented by specially chosen photographs, prints and other visual
records, drawn from a variety of libraries and repositories, including Wellcome
Images and the WHO Picture Library, and which help to enrich and expand the
arguments and themes presented in the text.
As well as highlighting historical failures
and enduring problems, the chapters give hopeful evidence of successful
initiatives that could be adopted and built on across the globe and of a
burgeoning commitment by individuals and national and international
organisations to bring forward changes for the better.
The book is trilingual with English,
Portuguese and Hindi translations side by side so as to reach the widest
possible audience within international agencies, national and local
governments, and civil society groupings.
The origins of the work, which is the
latest volume in a series examining a range of issues in global public health
and health policy, lie in the University of York's commitment to health equity
and promotion internationally, which it seeks to advance through independent
and evidence-based research. The opportunities to prepare this book in close
partnership with colleagues at the World Health Organization were made
available through the Centre for Global Health Histories’ designation as the
WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories through which it works
closely with UN agencies and national governments on policy advocacy and public
engagement. The editors have worked closely also with the Brazilian Federal
Government (via Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro), and the World Bank. The research and
editing work was funded by the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation
based in the UK, via Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders, and the Centre
for Global Health Histories at the University of York, UK.
A poster exhibition has been created from
twenty of the most striking images from the book. The exhibition will go on display in the
University of York’s Ron Cooke Hub as part of a day of events to mark World
Mental Health Day on 10 October 2017. The book will also be officially launched
at a public lecture in the evening and free copies will be available to the
public to take away.
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The book was co-edited by Philip Kerrigan, Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Samantha Peel, Magali Romero Sa, Raghav Kishore and Alex Wade.
Contents
Introduction
1) Andrew Scull – Asylums and care in the
community: The dilemmas of mental health policy
2) Samantha Peel – A short visual history
of the use of electricity in mental health
3) Jerome Wright – Building capacity and
increasing access to community mental health care
4) Carlos Estellita-Lins – Mental health,
indigenous suicide and shaminism in Brazil
5) Stephanie Charles & Poppy Nash – The
role of schools in promoting the mental wellbeing of young people in the UK
6) Soumitra Pathare, Jasmine Kalha, Titus
Joseph, Michelle Funk, Natalie Drew-Bold and Akwatu Khenti – QualityRights
Gujarat
7) Patricio V. Marquez and Timothy G. Evans
– Global burden of mental disorders: Is there a way forward?
8) Shekhar Saxena, Global mental health and
the World Health Organization
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