Think about investing in intercultural mental health

My previous entry implied that the 'Grand challenges in global mental health' initiative is a thinly veiled attempt to obtain funding from the Gates Foundation for mental health research. I'm not sure if this is right, as the Gates Foundation Global Health Strategy has "chosen not to focus on research in mental health, even though it is a serious health problem in developing countries, in part because of the very large contributions already being made by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the pharmaceutical industry, and other funders".

I guess the initiative must be directed at other funders, or maybe it's hoping the Gates Foundation will change its mind. Anyway, well done to the Gates Foundation for not supporting such a project.

Thought needs to be given to the conceptual foundation of any investment in intercultural mental health. 'Grand challenges in global mental health' tied itself to the academic concept of 'global mental health' linked to a past series of Lancet articles. However, there are problems with the validity of the knowledge base for this approach (see Derek Summerfield's BMJ article). The best book in the field of transcultural psychiatry (I prefer the term intercultural - see David Ingleby's chapter from my Critical psychiatry book) is Suman Fernando's Mental health, race and culture.