Globalization

Study finds that traditional healers in South Africa, whose services are widely used by the country’s population, perform important suicide prevention work.

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

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

Barbara Ehrenreich weighs in on mass-market mindfulness, Silicon Valley, Buddhism- sliced up and commodified.

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

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

Structural competency is put forth as a framework that addresses social and structural determinants in global mental health.

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

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

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

Researchers explore how family interventions for psychosis might be adapted to China’s emerging integrated mental health care landscape.

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.

In many respects it is difficult to fault the report Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, recently published by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP)[i]; indeed, as recent posts on Mad in America have observed, there is much to admire in it. Whilst not overtly attacking biomedical interpretations of psychosis, it rightly draws attention to the limitations and problems of this model, and points instead to the importance of contexts of adversity, oppression and abuse in understanding psychosis. But the report makes only scant, fleeting references to the role of cultural differences and the complex relationships that are apparent between such differences and individual experiences of psychosis.

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.”

Researchers provide an action-planning framework to engage providers in the reduction of low-value healthcare.

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

A new study explores how “psychosis” and “schizophrenia” are viewed within the Māori community in New Zealand.

A literature review published in BMC Public Health by researchers from Portugal and the Czech Republic summarizes results from 101 studies investigating the effect...

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

A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and fish has repeatedly been found to improve mental health.

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.

Study questions how international psychiatric treatment of street children in Cairo could be reinforcing their marginality and vulnerability.

Researchers examine the transformation of work, life, and identity in India as a result of Western corporate and psychological culture.

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

Canadian study finds that social service spending is associated with a decrease in mortality and increase in life expectancy.