Reflections on the next ten years of research, policy and implementation in global mental health
Open accessAbstract
Since the World Health Report 2001 focused on mental health for the first time, the field of global mental health has seen unprecedented growth in policy commitments and research. Yet many challenges remain, including a lack of substantial new financial investments from governments, ongoing human rights abuses suffered by people living with mental illness, weak health systems in low resource settings and large gaps in our knowledge regarding aetiology, prevention of mental illness and mental health promotion. Stark inequalities persist between high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) in research knowledge and service resources. This editorial sets out to reflect on progress to date, and suggest priorities and possible future trends for research, policy and service implementation, especially in LMIC.
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In LMICs, as in much of the world, mental health is consistently relegated to a secondary or even tertiary concern.
“In LMICs, as in much of the world, mental health is consistently relegated to a secondary or even tertiary concern [1, 100, 101]”
From Barriers and facilitators to implementation of evidence-based task-sharing mental health interventions in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review using implementation science frameworks (2022) · cites this paper as [101]
The passage on policy commitments reports that most LMICs have not substantially increased mental-health funding and that development assistance remains very small. This supports the claim that mental health receives low practical priority in LMICs, but the paper does not establish that it is consistently a secondary or tertiary concern across much of the world. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Authors
- Lund, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Cape Town (ZA)
- Corresponding author
- Lund, Crick
- ORCID
- Lund, Crick
- Venue
- Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2019-11-19
- Volume
- 29
- Pages
- e77-e77
- ISSN
- 2045-7960 (ISSN-L)
- 2045-7979
- PMC
- PMC8061148
- OpenAlex
- W2990811159
- Cited by
- 23
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychiatric care and mental health services
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Global Health and Surgery
- Keywords
- global mental health, mental health policy, mental health research priorities, low- and middle-income countries, human rights of people with mental illness, mental illness prevention, research inequality
- MeSH terms
- Forecasting, Health Policy, Humans, Mental Health, Research, Global Health
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