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Cited by 49Historical Psychiatry and Medical PracticesAnthropological Studies and InsightsMental Health Treatment and Access

Genealogies and anthropologies of global mental health

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Lovell, Anne M., Read, Ursula M., Lang, Claudia·2019·Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
DOI 10.1007/s11013-019-09660-7
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Abstract

Within the proliferation of studies identified with global mental health, anthropologists rarely take global mental health itself as their object of inquiry. The papers in this special issue were selected specifically to problematize global mental health. To contextualize them, this introduction critically weighs three possible genealogies through which the emergence of global health can be explored: (1) as a divergent thread in the qualitative turn of global health away from earlier international health and development; (2) as the product of networks and social movements; and (3) as a diagnostically- and metrics-driven psychiatric imperialism, reinforced by pharmaceutical markets. Each paper tackles a different component of the assemblage of global mental health: knowledge production and circulation, global mental health principles enacted in situ, and subaltern modalities of healing through which global mental health can be questioned. Pluralizing anthropology, the articles include research sites in meeting rooms, universities, research laboratories, clinics, healers and health screening camps, households, and the public spaces of everyday life, in India, Ghana, Brazil, Senegal, South Africa, Kosovo and Palestine, as well as in US and European institutions that constitute nodes in the global network through which scientific knowledge and certain models of mental health circulate.

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  • The evidence for efficacy of psychiatric drugs has often been questioned, and several authors point out that global mental health retains significant ties with the pharmaceutical industry.

    “The evidence for the efficacy of psychiatric drugs has often been questioned, too, with several authors pointing out that global mental health retains significant ties with the pharmaceutical industry (e.g., Littoz-Monnet 2022;Fernando 2011;Lovell et al. 2019).”

    From Throwing therapy at the problem mental health and humanitarian intervention in Palabek refugee settlement, northern Uganda (2023) · cites this paper as Lovell et al. 2019

    In “Critics and the Construction of Global Mental Health” (page unavailable), the paper says the argument that global mental health expands pharmaceutical-industry markets finds some support in the case of antidepressants. It also reports limitations of treatment based solely on pharmaceuticals, but does not directly say that evidence for psychiatric drugs’ efficacy has often been questioned. The paper qualifies the industry connection by noting that current care packages focus primarily on psychosocial interventions. (LLM, conf=0.84)

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  • Critical voices question the application of the concept of depression and associated treatment science, mostly developed in European contexts, in diverse cultural settings around the world.

    “Critical voices question the application of the concept of depression and associated treatment science, mostly developed in European contexts, in diverse cultural settings around the world. 14”

    From Time for united action on depression: a Lancet–World Psychiatric Association Commission (2022) · cites this paper as [14]

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2 of the 169 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 9

  1. Bemme, Doerte 2018 Contingent Universals, Aggregated Truth: An Ethnography of Knowledge in Global Mental Health. PhD Dissertation. Department of Anthropology, McGill University.
  2. Castel, Robert 1994 Problematization as a Mode of Reading History. In Foucault and the Writing of History, pp. 237-252.
  3. Foucault, Michel 1977 Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 191.
  4. Good, Mary-Jo Del Vecchio, Sandra Teresa Hyde, Sarah Pinto, and Byron Good, eds. 2008 Postcolonial Disorders. London: University of California Press.
  5. Harding, Timothy W. 1979 Sante ´Mentale et Soins de Sante ´Primaires: Premiers Re ´sultats d'une E ´tude Concerte ´e de l'OMS. Psychopathologie Africaine 15(1):5-28.
  6. Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das, and Margaret M. Lock 1997 Social Suffering. Berkeley, London: University of California Press.
  7. Lock, Margaret, and Vinh-Kim Nguyen 2018 An Anthropology of Biomedicine. Second Edition. Hoboken: Wiley.
  8. Murray, Christopher J., and Alan D. Lopez 1996 Global Burden of Disease (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  9. Nietzsche, Friedrich 2013[1887] On the Genealogy of Morals. London: Penguin.

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Authors
Lovell, A. M., Read, U. M., & Lang, C.
Affiliations
  • Inserm (FR)
  • King's College London (GB)
  • Leipzig University (DE)
Corresponding author
Lovell, Anne M.
ORCID
Venue
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2019-11-15
Volume
43
Issue
4
Pages
519-547
ISSN
  • 0165-005X (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-076X
DOI
10.1007/s11013-019-09660-7
OpenAlex
W2987885608
Cited by
48
References
169
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 2
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Culture Medicine and Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
  • Warwick Research Archive Portal (University of Warwick) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • H2020 European Research Council (GLOBHEALTH 340510)
  • Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-13-BSH1-009)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
Keywords
global mental health, pharmaceutical market, knowledge production and circulation, social movements, networks
MeSH terms
Anthropology, Humans, Mental Health, Global Health

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