The Movement for Global Mental Health : : Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia / / ed. by Claudia Lang, William Sax.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Amsterdam University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• MitwirkendeR: Bihari Mukharji, Projit,; Das, Anindya,; Ecks, Stefan,; Halliburton, Murphy,; Hornbacher, Annette,; Lang, Claudia,; Naraindas, Harish,; Quack, Johannes,; Rao, Mohan,; Sax, William S.,
• HerausgeberIn: Lang, Claudia,; Sax, William,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Social Studies in Asian Medicine ; 2
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (346 p.)

In this volume, prominent anthropologists, public health physicians, and psychiatrists respond sympathetically but critically to the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH), which seeks to export psychiatry throughout the world. They question some of its fundamental assumptions: the idea that "mental disorders" can clearly be identified; that they are primarily of biological origin; that the world is currently facing an "epidemic" of them; that the most appropriate treatments for them normally involve psycho-pharmaceutical drugs; and that local or indigenous therapies are of little interest or importance for treating them. Instead, the contributors argue that labeling mental suffering as "illness" or "disorder" is often highly problematic; that the countries of South and Southeast Asia have abundant, though non- psychiatric, resources for dealing with it; that its causes are often social and biographical; and that many non-pharmacological therapies are effective for dealing with it. In short, they advocate a thoroughgoing mental health pluralism.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- List of Tables -- 1 Global Mental Health -- Critical Histories -- 2 Mental Ills for All -- 3 Schizoid Balinese? -- 4 Misdiagnosis -- The Limits of Global Mental Health -- 5 Jinns and the Proletarian Mumin Subject -- 6 Psychedelic Therapy -- Alternatives -- 7 The House of Love and the Mental Hospital -- 8 Ayurvedic Psychiatry and the Moral Physiology of Depression in Kerala -- 9 Global Mental Therapy -- Afterwords -- 10 Global Mental Health -- 11 “Treatment” and Why We Need Alternatives -- Index