Investigating global mental health: Contributions from political science

ABSTRACT

This article outlines an agenda for political science engagement with global mental health. Other social sciences have tackled the topic, investigating such questions as the link between poverty and mental health disorders. Political science is noticeably absent from these explorations. This is striking because mental health disorders affect one billion people globally, governments spend only about 2% of their health budgets on these disorders, and most people lack access to treatment. With its focus on power, political science could deepen knowledge on vulnerabilities to mental illness and explain weak policy responses. By illustrating how various forms of power pertaining to governance, knowledge, and moral authority work through the concepts of issue framing, collective action, and institutions, the article shows that political science can deepen knowledge on this global health issue. Political science can analyse how incomplete knowledge leads to contentious framing, thus hobbling advocacy. It can explain why states shirk their obligations in mental health, and it can question how incentives drive mental health mobilisation. The discipline can uncover how power undergirds institutional responses to global mental health at the international, national, and community levels. Political science should collaborate with other social sciences in research networks to improve policy outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Global mental health
• power
• framing
• collective action
• institutions

Acknowledgements

This article emerged from a workshop entitled ‘Global health: Bridging the disciplinary divides’ held at the Balsillie School for International Affairs (BSIA), Canada, 25–26 March, 2019. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, BSIA, Leeds University, and the University of the South provided financial support. The authors are grateful for the efforts of Valerie Percival in bringing the workshop to fruition, as well as helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Jeremy Shiffman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1693-4671

Notes

1 As a metric, DALYs provide a picture of the present health status for a population compared to an ideal health situation in which the population does not face disabilities, morbidities, or premature mortality. DALYs are the sum of the Years Lost due to Disability (YLD) and Years of Life Lost (YLL) due to premature mortality (WHO, n.d.).

2 The percentage is 1% in low-income countries and under 5% in Latin America’s middle-income countries (Patel et al., 2018; Vigo et al., 2019; Pan-American Health Organization, 2013).

3 Some political scientists have examined national-level mental health policies (for example, on mental health policies in the U.S. context, see Marmor & Gill, 1989; Halliwell, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [grant number 611-2018-0379], the Balsillie School for International Affairs, Leeds University, and the University of the South.