Joop de Jong -- The "Folie à Trois" between Global Mental Health, Anthropology and Psychiatry
Channel: Transcultural Psychiatry
Date: 2012-12-03

Mitigating the global mental health gap is complicated by controversies around the need to address psychiatric versus psychosocial problems, the professional disciplines and societal sectors being involved, the collaboration between community, (non-) governmental and international actors, the applicability of "talking therapy", the emphasis on vulnerability versus resilience, the way to deal with complex health systems and with culturally-diverse groups, or the question whether day-to-day care is different in times of disaster or political violence. This presentation will first argue that a public mental health paradigm may help to transcend many of these contradictions that often seem to be more relevant for professionals and scholars than for people coming to terms with their plight. Secondly, this presentation will elaborate the complementarity of a universalistic view of mental health versus local perceptions and expressions such as idioms of distress. The choice between these perspectives is highly relevant for the type of practitioners that is likely being involved in solving socio-psychological or more serious afflictions. This implicates a need for research into the efficacy of local healing methods and into the healers' contribution to bridge the mental health gap. Thirdly, the perennial debate between universalism and relativism may be solved with cultural neuro-scientific and neuro-anthropological research. The paradigm of cultural neuroscience may help us refine our global psychiatric diagnostic classification system and assist in bridging the worlds of global mental health, anthropology, psychiatry and epidemiology.