Mental Health Worldwide Culture, Globalization and Development

Mental Health Worldwide offers a perceptive critique of the universalized model of psychiatry and its apparent exportation from the West to the developing world. The foundational concepts of the dominant models in psychiatry, however, are understood very differently in non-western cultural traditions. Whilst there is a worldwide need to emphasize mental health in the context of public health, the 'traditional psychiatric' model, with its focus on medicalization and drug-based 'cures', may not always be appropriate, and its approaches should not be employed unquestioningly. Here, Suman Fernando takes a much-needed critical look at the field of psychiatry in an international context, proposing suggestions for advancing mental health and wellbeing in low and middle income countries in a way that is ethical, sustainable and culturally sensitive. These lessons can also be applied to developing service provision in the West in our increasingly globalized world.

Suman Fernando is Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at London Metropolitan University, UK. Before that he was Senior Lecturer at the European Centre for Migration and Social Care at the University of Kent, UK, and consultant psychiatrist in the National Health Service for over twenty years. He is active in non-governmental organizations in UK and abroad, as well as being consultant to capacity development programmes in Sri Lanka. He has written and lectured widely on mental health development. In 2011 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for Culture, Race and Mental Health by the University of Toronto, Canada.

PART I: CULTURAL HISTORY OF MADNESS, PSYCHIATRY AND MENTAL HEALTH
1. Culture and Globalization in Relation to Mental Health
2. Understanding Madness, Mental Illness and Mental Health
3. Medicalization of Human Problems in the West
PART II: WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MAJORITY WORLD
4.Mental Health and Mental Illness in Non-Western Countries
5. Colonial Psychiatry
PART III: PSYCHIATRY AND MENTAL HEALTH AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR; EXPORTING PSYCHIATRY TO THE GLOBAL SOUTH
6. Medication Revolution and Emerging Discontents
7. Ethnic Problems in the West and Neo-Imperialism Abroad
8. International Politics of Mental Health and Psychiatry
PART IV: DEVELOPING MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
9. Modernizing Mental Health Services in the Global North
10. Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Global South
11. After-Thoughts: Power, Diagnosis and the Majority World