In many African countries, mental health issues, including the burden of serious mental illness and trauma, have not been adequately addressed. These essays shed light on the treatment of common and chronic mental disorders, including mental illness and treatment in the current climate of economic and political instability, access to health care, access to medicines, and the impact of HIV-AIDS and other chronic illness on mental health. While problems are rampant and carry real and devastating consequences, this volume promotes an understanding of the African mental health landscape in service of reform.

This is the definitive textbook on global mental health, an emerging priority discipline within global health, which places priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide.

The Handbook of Forensic Mental Health in Africa traces the history of forensic mental health in Africa, discussing the importance of considering cultural differences when implementing Western-validated practices on the continent while establishing state-of-the-art assessment and treatment of justice-involved persons. Experts in the field of forensic mental health throughout Africa explore the current state of forensic mental health policy and service provision, as well as the unique ethical challenges which have arisen with the recent growth of interest in the field. The African and international research literature on violence risk assessment, competency to stand trial, malingering assessment, Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) evaluations, report writing as an expert witness and mental health legislation in the context of forensic practice are explored throughout. Finally, future directions for forensic mental health in Africa are discussed for juvenile, female and elderly offenders. This text is ideal for mental health, criminal justice and legal professionals working in clinical, research and policy contexts.

Prevention of mental illness and mental health promotion have often been ignored in the past, both in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula. Recently, however, there has been a clear shift towards public mental health, as a result of increasing scientific evidence that both these actions have a serious potential to reduce the onset of illness and subsequent burden as a result of mental illness and related social, economic and political costs. A clear distinction between prevention of mental illness and mental health promotion is critical. Selective prevention, both at societal and individual level, is an important way forward. The Oxford Textbook of Public Mental Health brings together the increasing interest in public mental health and the growing emphasis on the prevention of mental ill health and promotion of well-being into a single comprehensive textbook. Comprising international experiences of mental health promotion and mental well-being, chapters are supplemented with practical examples and illustrations to provide the most relevant information succinctly. This book will serve as an essential resource for mental and public health professionals, as well as for commissioners of services, nurses and community health visitors.

This open access book offers essential information on values-based practice (VBP): the clinical skills involved, teamwork and person-centered care, links between values and evidence, and the importance of partnerships in shared decision-making. Different cultures have different values; for example, partnership in decision-making looks very different, from the highly individualized perspective of European and North American cultures to the collective and family-oriented perspectives common in South East Asia. In turn, African cultures offer yet another perspective, one that falls between these two extremes (called batho pele). The book will benefit everyone concerned with the practical challenges of delivering mental health services. Accordingly, all contributions are developed on the basis of case vignettes, and cover a range of situations in which values underlie tensions or uncertainties regarding how to proceed in clinical practice. Examples include the patient’s autonomy and best interest, the physician’s commitment to establishing high standards of clinical governance, clinical versus community best interest, institutional versus clinical interests, patients insisting on medically unsound but legal treatments etc. Thus far, VBP publications have mainly dealt with clinical scenarios involving individual values (of clinicians and patients). Our objective with this book is to develop a model of VBP that is culturally much broader in scope. As such, it offers a vital resource for mental health stakeholders in an increasingly inter-connected world. It also offers opportunities for cross-learning in values-based practice between cultures with very different clinical care traditions.

In this first history of psychiatry in colonial Africa, Jock McCulloch describes the clinical approaches of well-known European practitioners, including Frantz Fanon and Wulf Sachs. They operated independently of one another.Yet, despite their differences,they shared a coherent set of ideas about 'the African Mind', based on the colonial notion of African inferiority.By exploring the association between settler ideology and psychiatric research, this study examines colonial science as a system of knowledge and power.

Culture and Mental Health takes a critical look at theresearch pertaining to common psychological disorders, examininghow mental health can be studied from and vary according todifferent cultural perspectives. Introduces students to the main topics and issues in the areaof mental health using culture as the focus Emphasizes issues that pertain to conceptualization,perception, health-seeking behaviors, assessment, diagnosis, andtreatment in the context of cultural variations Reviews and actively encourages the reader to consider issuesrelated to reliability, validity and standardization of commonlyused psychological assessment instruments among different culturalgroups Highlights the widely used DSM-IV-TR categorization ofculture-bound syndromes

A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity. Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity. Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma.

The enormous health and social burdens associated with mental disorders have global reach and persist in the setting of unmet needs. To address these, the pipeline of global mental health trainees must be expanded and nurtured as the next generation of practitioners, investigators, and educators advance innovation in mental health prevention, promotion, and health delivery. This book offers a much-needed introduction to the rapidly evolving field of global mental health. The editors bring their extensive expertise and experience in global mental health research, practice, and training, which includes working in academic and non-profit settings, building collaborations, and teaching hundreds of students and trainees. The volume’s 12 chapters - authored by over 60 contributors from multiple disciplines - offer a breadth of content that comprises an introductory framework. This volume is an essential read for learners and educators who seek to explore or deepen their interest in the field of global mental health. Its orientation to fundamentals of practice and training and contextualization with social science perspectives will also be invaluable to health professionals, social scientists, policymakers, and other professionals who are invested in training the next generation of global mental health practitioners.