Against Global Mental Health - Dr. Derek Summerfield

Global mental health now has its own academic units, literature, study, and training courses and the World Health Organization is a major articulator of this work.  It has been asserted that mental disorders now represent a substantial “though largely hidden” proportion of the world’s overall disease burden, that every year up to 30% of the global population would develop some form of disorder, and that there was strong evidence for scaling up mental health services worldwide.  Using his own experience, Dr. Derek Summerfield will examine the evidence for these claims and challenge the assumption that Western frameworks can generate a universally valid knowledge base.  Q&A to follow.