Globalization

In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.

Debate ensues as scholars and policymakers discuss how to bring a rights-based approach to mental health policy.

CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.

Contemporary empirical research explores new ways to conceptualize and heal racial trauma through anticolonial and sociohistorical lenses.

An anthropological look at the Global Mental Health (GMH) movement suggests several ethical problems and contradictions in its mission.

MIA’s Micah Ingle interviews Mary Watkins about reorienting psychology toward liberation and social justice.

Dr. Gail Hornstein, author of Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, discusses the importance of personal narratives and service-user activism in the context of the global mental health movement.

A new study suggests proximity to green space as a child is linked to lower rates of mental health issues in adulthood.

A re-visioned approach to social psychiatry aims to understand the broad influence of social life on mental health.

Researchers explore neoliberal influences on interactions in psychotherapy and question whether the radical potential of psychotherapy can counter prevailing social systems.

China Mills raises concerns that global mental health movements obscure social determinants of health and naturalize Western mental health concepts.

Are White Americans’ poor mental health outcomes caused by Whiteness?

False beliefs about biological differences between races are associated with a failure to provide recommended pain treatments to Black people.

Researchers argue that blaming climate change inaction on psychological barriers ignores the effects of neoliberal capitalism and social structures.

Psychology can only deal with racial health disparities effectively by incorporating critical race theory and intervening at a structural level.

Study in Brazil demonstrates how the exploration of contextual determinants of distress in mental health care can inform therapeutic change.

Behind the U.S. task force recommendation to screen all children and adults for depression.

Researcher Dr. Silke Schwarz highlights how Western psychology’s construction of individual resilience deflects emphasized individual pathology and deflects efforts at structural change.

Researchers find evidence of low socio-economic status White Americans’ rising distress and declining well-being since the mid-1990s.

As the Global Mental Health Movement attempts to address cross-cultural mental health disparities, a new article encourages integrating traditional healing practices with psychotherapy.

Meta-analytic study detects upsurge in patterns of perfectionism in young adults and explores how neoliberalism contributes to this trend.

Ethnographic research sheds light on extensive psychopharmaceutical use by soldiers in post 9/11 U.S. wars.

Trauma-informed approaches have the potential to promote recovery but must involve survivors and service-users to prevent the experience of retraumatization within psychiatric and mental health services.

Researchers call for action to address social challenges and inequalities that obstruct mental health and well-being globally.