Situating global mental health: sociocultural perspectives

This introductory chapter of The Palgrave Handbook of Sociocultural Perspectives on Global Mental Health highlights how understanding about aberrant behaviours has varied across time, geography and culture. Important developments that contributed to the emergence of Global Mental Health are discussed. Rather than a monolithic enterprise, Global Mental Health is presented as a heterogeneous range of practice- and research-based activities concerned with reducing inequities in mental health service provision that has particularly focused on low- and middle-income countries. The chapter summarises debates that have arisen about the relative contribution that particular epistemic frames and research paradigms have made to the development of Global Mental Health. Sociocultural factors are identified as an important, but often neglected, area of Global Mental Health enquiry. The chapter concludes by providing an overview of the three parts of the handbook (1. Mental Health Across The Globe: Conceptual Perspectives From Social Science and the Humanities; 2. Globalising Mental Health: Challenges and Opportunities, 3. Case Studies of Innovative Practice and Policy) and highlights key themes and topics that are covered.