8 November 2021
Dear readers,
Welcome back to the newsletter in the full swing of the event-news-academic season. World Mental Health Day may be merely one day a year for many people, but for those working in global mental health every day is full of the same priorities, concerns and work. This newsletter, as ever, is dedicated to bringing you the most interesting pieces. It is turning one next month, and I can’t believe how many people have subscribed, read and sent their comments to me during these 11 months. If you have benefited from the newsletter in any way - found a job opportunity, a valuable resource, an important event, or an enriching publication - will you take a moment to share this with me at manolova.gergana@gmail.com? This cheers me up enormously and keeps me motivated to do my best with the newsletter. As usual, any other feedback and suggestions you would like to share are very welcome.
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Yours,
Gergana
News and Notes in Global Mental Health
Here I share interesting pieces of information, announcements and news that have reached me in our field. I will rely on your contributions as well - please share your news or announcements with me.
France upping the therapy stakes
President of France Emmanuel Macron has announced that any citizen aged 3-plus in France will be able to receive up to 8 sessions of therapy covered by government starting in 2022, with the possibility of renewal. In this, France is catching up to other European countries such as Germany and the UK in extending mental health coverage to psychological therapy. (Switzerland will follow in July 2022.) Is this due to the alarming survey results of the Covid-19-induced mental health distress? Or was it spurred by the high-level global mental health summit in Paris on 5-6 October? It is good for decision-making when circumstances converge categorically, although let us hope it won’t take until every country has hosted the annual summit for mental health treatment coverage.
UK funding opportunities for mental health research
Researchers from UK-based organizations can apply by 1 December for the UKRI funding for methodological innovation or identifying innovative approaches in mental health research activities on adolescence, mental health and the developing mind. Find out more at the UKRI website.
Governments’ mental health commitments
World Mental Health Day has got too big for governments to ignore - well, for some governments at least. United for Global Mental Health has a neat roundup of pledges and promises made around the world in recognition of the raised profile of mental health research, care and treatment following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. And certainly the growing knowledge, awareness and demands by voting citizens about what good mental health looks like doesn’t hurt, either. The list is not complete, so feel free to share your own national news with UGMH on Twitter.
Special edition about marginalized communities in the pandemic
The journal Frontiers in Public Health is holding a special edition on global mental health among marginalized communities in pandemic emergencies, guest edited by Lawrence Yang, Nawaraj Upadhaya, Peter Navario and Brian James Hall. Submit your own publication or suggest others who may be interested through the website here.
Psychosis Around the World
Four years ago, I worked with the Volunteering and International Psychiatry Special Interest Group (VIPSIG) of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK, to put together a collection of brief perspectives from more than 35 countries on depression around the world to mark World Health Day 2017. Now we are back into the fray to do the same thing on the topic of psychosis around the world. Please join us with your 500-word perspective about how psychosis is experienced, treated, considered in your country or setting. Anyone can write, and submissions from people with lived experience, students of mental health, people in other fields of work, researchers and professionals are most welcome. Email me at manolova.gergana@gmail.com by 15 November (deadline extended).
Events in Global Mental Health
The event calendar for 2021 is updated and you can keep track of it at globallyminded.org. Most of the events this year are taking place online and there is a serious question mark hanging over those announced to be in person. The online events are announced on a very short timeline and I often put them on the events list only 2-3 days before they are due, so I would recommend you keep checking the list regularly to see what is coming up.
19-21 November - Global Mental Health: Agents of Change conference organized by Generation Mental Health. This second annual conference offers to people of all backgrounds a place to not only learn more about the interdisciplinary field of global mental health, but urge them to utilize their passions and skills to make real change in their communities and equip the next generation of mental health leaders with the tools they need to implement equitable mental health solutions. I’m proud to have been involved, in a small way, in organizing the conference, which features such a varied list of knowledgeable speakers from all over the world. The range of topics covers many aspects of mental health, from climate change and political economy to traditional healing, lived experience innovation and maternal mental health. Add in the networking and mentoring opportunities, the workshops and the keynotes, and this is the perfect conference to learn more about the broad field of mental health and find your interests. Definitely recommended for students, early career professionals and researchers, and people simply interested in mental health. Fee waivers available!
Jobs in Global Mental Health
The jobs listed here might not be advertised as being in global mental health and the decision for including them is mine alone. Unless otherwise stated, I have found out about them through job sites, social media posts, other newsletters and so on, so I have no more information on them than publicly available and you should refer to those listed in the job ad.
No or minimum experience necessary
PhD studentship, University of Bristol, UK - by 26 November
PhD studentship, Kingston University, UK (UK students only)
Student growth manager, Sanity by Tanmoy, India - by 10 November
PhD studentships, University College London, UK - by 22 January 2022
NIHR PhD studentships, UK - by 18 November
Some experience (2-5 years) necessary
Research Assistant, EMPOWER Lone Star, US
Research Fellow, Queen Mary University of London, UK - by 8 November
Research/Senior Research Associate, Lancaster University, UK - by 11 November
Research Support Specialist, Stony Brook University, US - by 19 November
5+ years of experience necessary
Innovation Manager, UNICEF, Sweden - by 10 November
Clinical Advisor for Mental Health, Center for Victims of Torture, US - by 20 November
Development Director, Friendship Bench, Zimbabwe - by 22 November
Strategic Information & Evaluation Manager, Friendship Bench, Zimbabwe - by 8 November
Clinical Faculty, University of Denver, US - by 30 November
BasicNeeds Mental Health Coordinator, CBM UK - by 5 December
Resources in Global Mental Health
A section for various opportunities, databanks, information sources that may prove helpful.
This month, I dug into the endless supply of free online resources to offer you some courses that complement the field of global mental health. Enhance your knowledge and expand your interests with some of the below, or if you want a longer and more in-depth experience, expect the December newsletter which will have a dedicated section on how - and where - to study global mental health…
Design Thinking for the Greater Good - using the principles of human-centered design thinking for social innovation, this course also presents real world stories, including about mental health in Australia.
Population Health: Syndemics - clearly explaining the concept of syndemics, the course uses examples from all of public health, including mental health, to show how epidemics create complex pictures and require synergistic problem-solving.
The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness - the context of North America illustrates nicely the role that societal attitudes play into the perception of mental illness, diagnosing, and caring by services or family.
Psychological First Aid - a very popular course which trains you to be a psychological first aider, it is excellent if you want to dig a little deeper into the basic principles of helping.
Psychological First Aid: Supporting Children and Young People - supplement the above course with this one focused specifically on children and young people in emergencies and crises, which also has topical information on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Food and Mood - behind the simple title, the course is an academic exploration of the evidence for the relationship between nutrition and mental health, which underlies the nascent discipline of nutritional psychiatry.
Publications in Global Mental Health
The selection of publications ultimately reflects my personal knowledge and preferences, but I have no intended bias. Feel free to send me publications you consider interesting or that you would like to be featured.
The contribution of authors from low- and middle-income countries to top-tier mental health journals - this article is proof how a straightforward analysis of bibliographic data can evoke strong emotions, and I'm going on my own experience here. The details are succinctly presented in the short article itself; I will only remark on some aspects of the bigger and more complicated picture, which are possibly out of the scope of the text. For one, the review does not take into account all researchers that are from LMIC but are also affiliated with a HIC institution, because this would require asking each author individually. Authors may do this for many reasons. HIC institutions provide several desirable things for a LMIC researcher - “branded” affiliation that raises their profile and ensures better reception at journals (if you think the journal boards play fair and square, I suggest you look on Twitter); partnerships eligible for HIC grants; collaborative environment for shaping up and critiquing articles; and, last not least, the enormously expensive subscriptions that can give one access to these same journals. Without that, it would be impossible to publish, because one learns the style, subjects, and language that guarantee acceptance from the articles themselves.
Tied to the first is that the article reviews the top 30 ranking journals in English on mental health for 2019, while LMIC authors may prefer to publish in other languages, in lower-impact journals which have less gatekeeping, and which may not require article processing fees. The pressure on top journals to provide open-access publishing is all well and good, but it excludes those who cannot pay the “prohibitive” (in the article’s words) fees - and researchers from LMIC often don’t operate on grants that have this budgeted, if at all.
In the end, the publishing industry itself is an enormous part of the problem, constraining research in low- and middle-income countries. It is not about lack of research capacity, or not only; it is to a large degree about lacking the dedicated funds to afford playing the publishing game.
The Challenge of Indigenous Healing for Global Mental Health - this long article by Thomas Csordas in Transcultural Psychiatry (email me if you do not have access) examines the psychiatric and anthropological perspectives in global mental health and the need for bridging the two. For me the strength of this article is in its consideration of these “two households, both alike in dignity” - polar opposites within global mental health and with drastically different priorities in mental health treatment and systems. I will let you read the elucidation for yourselves. But a question very clearly raised in the article is how healing happens in mental health. For all of the money spent on genetic, pharmacological and neuroscience research, our progress in understanding is incremental and we still don't know even the exact operational mechanism of psychotropics, let alone the profound changes in mental illness recovery and relapse. Anthropology doesn't offer many insights either, except usually meticulously describing the procedures, the attitudes and the perceptions in the words of those involved in the healing. These two paradigms are usually perceived as worlds apart - or in the term of philosophy of science, incommensurate, impossible to compare. This article proposes an integrative framework for considering healing. Whether you find it convincing or not, the text also examines thoughtfully why it is important to have a shared framework and what the gains might be, for both sides, but most importantly for global mental health.
*Social image courtesy of Pexels.
The Language Corner
This Language Corner relies on interactions with you, the readers, to build an entertaining little multi-way dictionary of global mental health terms. Needless to say, terms don’t always translate equally well and might evoke different emotions in the different languages.
This month - to honour the passing of Aaron Beck, considered the father of cognitive behavioural therapy, this is how you say it in a number of languages, with the capital letters in the transcriptions indicating the stress:
Cognitive behavioural therapy (English)
علاج معرفي سلوكي [ʕiladʒ mʕrfiy suluukiy] (Arabic)
Когнитивно-поведенческа терапия [kognitIvno povedEncheska terApiya] (Bulgarian)
认知行为疗法 [rèn zhī xíngwéi liáofǎ] (Chinese)
Thérapie cognitivo-comportementale [teʁapIy kognitIvo kompoʁtemantAl] (French)
Когнитивно-поведенческая психотерапия [kagnitIvna pavedEncheskaya psihaterApiya] (Russian)
Terapias cognitivo-conductuales [terApias kognitIvo konduktuAles] (Spanish)
Share your language below!